


Staying Up

by MaybeShoe



Category: Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Bullying, Discrimination, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Hospitals, Light Angst, M/M, Paralysis, Slight Canon Divergence, Trans Character, kamuhina - Freeform, takes place before the tragedy, the kamuhina tag seemed kinda empty so I wanted to write this
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-22
Updated: 2016-10-27
Packaged: 2018-05-28 08:34:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 22,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6322429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaybeShoe/pseuds/MaybeShoe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Getting back up is the hardest part when one loses their ability to walk. Of course, trying to accept this above all else was especially hard when every other ability you could ever want is handed to you on a silver platter. The only real interest that Izuru has in anything these days is the boy that shows up in his hospital room to deliver his homework.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Praise

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally going to be a single chapter fic, but I felt like I would be able to organize it better if I wrote it in chapters. Enjoy.  
> (It's midnight what am I doing)

Paralysis didn’t happen like he would have expected it to. He didn’t just wake up one morning to find that he wasn’t able to use his legs. He didn’t sail off a cliff or walk out into traffic and crush them. Izuru had only been walking when he collapsed on the school's steps. He had been outside when it happened. Sure, he felt a bit more fatigued than usual on that particular day, but he thought that he was just feeling under the weather since he was just getting over a cold. His fingertips had been tingling quite a bit lately, perhaps from lack of circulation, and it was especially bad today for some reason, which was rather annoying. He chose to ignore his sluggish movements and just assumed that he would improve as the day progressed. He wasn't supposed to be outside the school. He wasn't supposed to show himself to the other students, but he did it anyway. Partially out of spite, but mostly out of childish rebellion. How was he too blame that his skin was so pale when he was hardly allowed outside? He was nearly translucent at this point. Besides, he wanted to know what it would feel like to blend in with the other students, to soak in their daily life a bit.

He hadn’t felt anything when his legs gave on the steps of the school. He fell on his face, papers went everywhere, and he tried to stand, but couldn’t. He dismissed it, as he was too rattled to pay it much mind, and tried to assess the damage. He was only able to when he touched his hand to his head and felt the dampness on his scalp. he pulled his hand away and immediately saw the red smeared all over his hand. That was enough to send him into a state of panic, as his blood was not a sight he was used to. He saw the blood dripping onto his schoolbooks and papers, and quickly went lightheaded. He didn’t remember much else, as lost consciousness and was left lying in a small pool of the thick red liquid. 

He did remember the strain on his legs when he had tried to stand, and failing. 

 

When he woke up, his room was all white. It wasn’t his room. He would never let his room stay painted such a ghastly color. It reminded him of an asylum or a mental hospital or something of the like. He was still in his school uniform, but something felt different. His uniform coat was nowhere to be found, and his white button-up was spotted with red, flaking blood. He vaguely remembered falling. It had felt like tripping on nothing. Nothing had caused it, or so he believed. Had he just fallen coming up the steps because he had tripped on one of the edges?

“-zuru.”

There was somebody in the room with him, sitting next to him and peering at him, slowly coming into focus. 

“Izuru.”

Izuru squinted to see the man who was in the room with him. “Jin?”

“Can you hear me?” His guardian asked. There was a nurse standing beside him. 

“Yes.” 

Jin sighed, covering his face with one hand. “Oh thank God.”

“Where am I?”

“You’re in the school’s hospital.”

Izuru had been here before. Many times. Though it was mostly for checkups to make sure that the improvements and alterations on his brain were still fully functional. 

“I fell.”

“Yes.” 

“On the stairs.”

“I know. You hit your head pretty badly. You weren’t supposed to be out there.”

Izuru felt his forehead to see if anything was different. A thick gauze was wrapped around his head, and he winced in pain as he put pressure on his head wound. So it really had happened. It hadn't been a dream.

“Don’t press on it.”

“Sorry.”

Jin paused, and looked back at the nurse standing by him. He then placed his hand on Izuru’s bedside. “Izuru. Can you stand?”

Izuru’s brow furrowed. “Of course I can.”

“Then stand for me.”

Still slightly confused by the odd request, Izuru braced himself in the mattress to stand. 

His legs wouldn’t respond. He felt the strain that he was putting on them, but he couldn’t move them. Izuru’s eyes widened in realization. He tried harder to get a response, but they still didn’t respond. He reached under his covers and tried to rouse them with his fists, pounding on his thighs harder and harder in hoping that something would come of it to get them to move. He tried again, short of breath and panting, but still couldn’t move more than a few centimeters. The strain he was putting on his legs hurt. When he could no longer take it, he collapsed back onto his pillow. A thin bead of sweat traced a line down his face.

Jin waited for Izuru’s breathing to slow, then spoke again. “Try it again.”

So Izuru did. It was the same result. Painful, fruitless efforts to stand, only feeling strain. He only managed to twitch his legs in certain directions but couldn’t get them to fully function. He grunted in frustration, not understanding what was happening. 

“Izuru, stop.”

Izuru looked Jin in the eyes. “I can’t move.”

Jin didn’t answer.

“Jin, tell me what’s happening.”

“Izuru, try to get some rest.”

“Not until you tell me why it is I can’t stand!”

“Izuru!” Izuru looked more closely. There were tears in Jin’s eyes. Which was strange, because normally this man showed very little emotion externally. Apparently this was a serious matter. “Please try to get some rest. We can talk it over later.”

How in the world did Jin expect him to rest? He couldn’t even move and nobody was telling him why. With this in mind, Izuru knew that arguing with Jin was damn near impossible if you wanted to win the argument. So soberly, he nodded and lay his head back down on his pillow. 

“I’ll be back soon.”

 

He never came back “soon.” Jin never came back at all. Izuru could hear him talking to the nurse out in the hallway for a while, but their voices became softer and softer. Now he heard nothing, not even a muffled tone. He tried moving again several times, but the results were always the same. Was this why he had collapsed in front of the school? Because his legs simply failed to perform?

Had they stopped working?

No. That was impossible. They were his legs. They had held him upright for as long as he had been alive and carried him this far. They couldn’t just stop working. Izuru knew that denial was just a childish symptom of fear, but right now he didn’t much care. It didn’t stop his breath from becoming ragged with stress. He lay in his bed for several minutes, the looming dread crushing him. 

_ This is stupid. _

More slowly this time, Izuru sat back up, using his forearms as support. He tried moving his legs again. Much to his surprise, they responded, albeit a little slower than he was used to. He sighed in relief. It had just been a spell of anxiety. He was used to those. The stress of getting knocked senseless by a slab of concrete must have triggered a temporary illusion of paralysis. He was fine.

He got up from his bed, carefully sliding himself off of it. His feet, still wearing socks, touched the cold linoleum ground. His body felt heavy, heavier than was natural. His legs were shaking, but they were still able to support him. If this really was all in his head, this was normal. The shaking would probably wear off in a few hours, a few days at the most.

Now to just make it to the door.

Izuru walked with slow, tedious steps. It was more difficult than he had anticipated. He stumbled a little and his movements were difficult to control, but he began to get a better hang of it after a few steps. He was walking again.

_ There. Easy. _

One foot in front of the other. Slowly, slowly, so as not to shock his endurance. He had to hold out both of his hands to steady himself, as he found balance to be a bit difficult. Keeping himself upright was surprisingly exhausting. Several trickles of sweat ran down his face, and he panted heavy breaths to compensate. He was almost to the door. Just a few more steps. Just a few more--

He hadn’t tripped. Or taken a wrong step. But his legs gave out.

Without so much as a warning, Izuru fell to his knees, crying out in surprise. He fell hard on the floor, catching himself with his arms. It still hurt, even though it wasn’t quite as rough as the first fall. It still took him by surprise.

He pulled himself back upright, torso first. His legs were sprawled underneath him, refusing to move once again. This couldn’t have been happening. Not to him. 

“S-stop…” Izuru stammered to no one in particular. “Stop it.”

This wasn’t happening, right? It was just stress, right? His legs would start working again if he just kept dragging his limp body across the room by his arms, right? This was only a sham, wasn’t it? 

Izuru groaned in discomfort, trying to carry the weight of his body on his arms. He would place his hands on a certain point on the floor and slide himself across it. First of all, it hurt. He usually had exceptionally good upper body strength, but he was already exhausted from earlier events. It was also more than a little humiliating, even if he was the only one in the room. He was at the door. All he needed to do was get back on his feet, open the door, find Jin and get the hell out of the school hospital.

It would have been made much easier if he were able to reach the aluminum door handle from where he was sprawled. He swatted at it again and again, his fingertips brushing it but never being able to quite grip it. He tried to force himself onto his knees, but he couldn’t. 

“Khhh….gah….!”

When finally, he couldn’t take the strain anymore, he lay face down on the floor, head turned to the side.

_ I can’t move my legs. _

 

_ I fell on the steps because my legs couldn’t support me. _

_ I couldn’t move from my bed because my legs aren’t able to respond. _

_ The reason that I fell and can’t move is that my legs can’t function. _

_ They don’t work anymore. _

 

Several nurses rushed into the room when they heard him scream.

 

\--

 

“It’s called Guillain-Barre syndrome. It occurs when the immune system attacks parts of the nervous system and causes symptoms similar to polio. It’s one of the rarer viruses, but it isn’t unheard of.” 

Several days of testing. Two CT scans and one MRI, blood work galore, and he was just now being told this. It had been a full week of impatience, frustration, not to mention utter boredom, and Izuru was positive that he was getting gravely behind in his studies while he was wasting his time in the hospital. They had even asked him to walk in some demoralizing exercise in which he had to move to one side of the room, pick up a book, and return it to it’s shelf without any leverage or support. It was made even more demoralizing since Izuru hadn’t been able to make it more than a couple of meters.  

“And how long do I have?” asked Izuru without looking the doctor in the eyes. He already knew what his condition was called, what it’s cause was, how to treat it, all of that. He had been practicing medicine for a few months now, long enough to surpass this woman. But people seem to be more cooperative when you’ve convinced them that they’re the smarter of the two, so he pretended he didn’t know. 

“It’s not going to kill you, it isn’t quite that critical,” she replied. “They didn’t tell me you were so morbid. But you will need immediate treatment as well as physical therapy. I wouldn’t recommend trying to walk on your own unless you want a repeat of how you hit your head.”

“Mmm.”

“Now listen, and this is important. You may have trouble breathing or experience rises in blood pressure now that you’re fully diagnosed. We can start blood treatment in a few days to relieve the symptoms, but in the meantime you need to rest. And I forbid you from moving one step from your bed unless you are instructed otherwise.”

“Mmm.”

“I know that it’s difficult,” she insured, acting like she understood which only made Izuru want to beat her to death even more. He would beat anyone to death in his current state. “We’re not sure how long your paralysis is going to last. But if you cooperate, I can assure you that you can be out of here in a matter of months.”

He didn’t even bother reacting. It seemed like too much work. So, wordlessly, the doctor got up and moved toward the door, taking her clipboard that Izuru was fairly sure all professionals in the medical or scientific field were required to carry in order to look smarter. That and the glasses. The woman probably only had the slightest prescription on those thin lenses. “He’s ready for you,” he heard her say.

Izuru tried to act like he didn’t notice Jin walking in and taking a seat where the doctor had been. Jin sat hunched forward, his breath scarce, like he was trying to work out what he wanted to say. He would start to say a word, but would stop before it could actually come out as a sound. “Izzy, look--”

“Stop calling me that,” Izuru growled coldly. He kept his eyes straight ahead. 

Jin just sighed. “Izuru, I know that this is difficult. But you aren’t making it any easier.”

“Easier for me or easier for you?”

“For the both of us.”

Fucking liar.

“Izuru, please,” Jin pleaded. “Help me out here, you have--”

“I know what I have!” Izuru yelled, making firm eye contact. “I was in the goddamn room when they were talking to me, don’t you remember!? I have a virus similar to poliomyelitis that’s attacking my nervous system, it’s going to choke me to death if it doesn’t give me a stroke first, and I’m paralyzed in my lower body! Well!? Do you need any more clarification?”

“You need to rest. I can get you a book or something, but you need to rest until they can begin treatment.”

“I want to leave. I want to go home.” He was surprised to hear himself say this. Izuru usually hated the Academy. But he would love to be anywhere other than here, and the Academy was the only home he had ever known. “And don’t tell me that I need rest, because I’ve been resting for an entire week and it’s been driving me utterly insane. I need to continue my studies. The paralysis is only temporary, isn’t it? I’ll be back upright in a week. I recover quickly, I always do.”

“It’s not just going to go away.”

“A month, then.”

“Maybe not even after a month.” Jin said. “This isn’t just some result of an anxiety attack. Worst case scenario, the paralysis might never go away.”

“Fine. I can have surgery.” Izuru was used to surgery. He had it done at least once or twice a month, but only in his brain.

“I don’t think surgery is going to help.”

Izuru was getting tired of this. Why couldn’t Jin just admit that he was wrong? “So I’ll just never walk again, is that it?” He shot sarcastically.  

“If this keeps up, then not properly, you won’t.” Jin had obviously sensed the sarcasm (He had taken care of Izuru for long enough to detect it), but chose to ignore it. “Even with physical therapy, they’re doubtful that it’ll get you fully up off the ground.”

Izuru grit his teeth in frustration. He would give just about anything to prove Jin wrong at this particular moment. He hated being wrong. Being right all the time was one of the few things he enjoyed that his life had to offer. He gripped his bedsheets, trying desperately to come up with something that would shut Jin up. 

“You’re right in one regard, though,” Jin went on, holding his chin contemplatively. “The Academy can’t let you get behind in your studies. We’re already a week behind.”

_ Computer programming this week. Easy. _

“So I’ll send for someone from student council to bring you necessary supplies for your research as well as classwork from your schooling schedule.”

“Student council?”

“All of the members are ahead of their classes as is required. It shouldn’t be a problem for them to miss school to help out.”

The student council. Of course. That whole pathetic squadron of hall monitors was like a second set of children to Jin. All of them referred to him by his first name and had his personal contact number in their phones.  Student council was easy to deal with most of the time. Most of the members he was on good terms with, but some of the members were quite bossy despite having to respect his status. Especially the student body president Murasame. He was always nagging Izuru that he wasn’t pulling his weight as he should be as the Ultimate Hope and should take his duties as the bearer of the title AND being a student representative more seriously. It wasn’t like it put Izuru under stress, it was just rather irritating. 

“I’ll call one of the members now.” Jin got up to leave, pulling his cell phone out of his pocket. “Don’t leave your room.” And with that, he was gone.

Izuru lay his head down on his pillow, staring up at the ceiling. Every so often he tried moving his feet under the covers just to see if he could get a response. 

He could almost see it. Three years of work was about to go tumbling into the abyss. Three years he had been alive, or so it felt like. Three years since he woke up in a hospital bed at the Academy. Three years he had acted as Hope’s Peak’s protege, and it was all about to disappear. He would never walk again, the school board would label him as ineffective and throw him out along with all of their other failed experiments. Half of his responsibilities towards his learning involved using his body, which was now indefinitely out of commission. It wouldn’t matter if he was still able to function intellectually. If he wasn’t able to perform just how the school board wanted him to, he would be cast aside. That was what he was the most afraid of. If it wasn’t an issue, he wouldn’t have cared as long as he could carry on his duties.

He had been twitching all week long without having to do any work. There were no televisions playing informative videos, no computers to use or to take apart and rebuild, hardly any books on building skills or containing new information that he could use. Izuru was so used to studying, day in and day out, that his body and mind couldn’t quite function properly without having information always at the ready. Study, practice, perfect. That repetitive cycle was the only life he had ever known. And furthermore, it was his duty to carry it out day after day. He existed to impress, and he had done a rather good job of doing so throughout the few years he had been alive, considering he was still around. The praise he received from school officials and researchers was good. He recognized that. The praise didn’t quite make him happy, he still struggled with that concept, but it did keep him going. It motivated him, since it seemed to please Jin enough when he did. Being talented was his purpose. And depriving him of that purpose may as well just be killing him. Just as this...defect was threatening to do. His fingers were constantly twitching, aching for something to do.

Perhaps this was his penance for trying to escape. 

It would only have been for a day. Just one day, blending in with the other students. Maybe taking the bus and going into town. He was always told that the city was nice in the fall, what with the cold air in the bright sunlight and the colored leaves making the sky look even more blue. Even someone as focused on success as he would grow curious about the feeling of being apart of the outside world. He would be able to benefit from it. He would take it in and remember it all. 

It didn’t end up happening.

 

\--

 

Out of all the worthless-looking fiction stacked high on the bookshelf in his room (thank God it wasn’t a shared room, then he really would have died), he was able to dig out one nonfiction with the help of one of the nurses. It was a thick novel on Nazi Germany, and although Izuru had wanted something a bit more pleasant to read, he decided to plow through it nonetheless. He was wasting his time in this silly phase of withdrawal. He had studied the Third Reich three times already, so he already knew most of the information the book had to offer. He was barely able to suppress his craving for something of the unknown.

He was about 100 pages in when a nurse slid open the door to his room with a clatter. “Kamukura-kun, there’s someone here to see you.” 

“Send them in,” he said without looking up from his book. It was probably the student council representative that Jin had sent for. It was about damn time.

He waited for a moment, and a brunette boy poked his head into the room through the doorframe. He had the most peculiar strand of hair sticking up from his head, pointed and bent to the side like a wire. His golden looking eyes swept over him meekly, as if the boy were afraid of something. Izuru had seen the boy a few times before, but it was a member that was surprisingly scarce to the student council. He could not recall the name for the life of him.

“U-um…” the boy started. “Did I come at a bad time?”

“Not particularly. I presume you’re from student council?”

“Yeah, th-that’s me.” The boy held up a large stack of books balanced underneath a thick compilation of papers and a laptop computer. “I’m dropping off your quota for today. It seems like kind of a tall order.”

“I can have it done by the end of today,” Izuru dismissed. “I appreciate you dropping it off.”

“Well, it’s not like I have anything better to do,” the boy laughed uneasily. “And uh, it’s the least I can do, y’know, with what happened…”

Izuru shot a small glare at the boy (not too severe, just to remind him not to broach the subject) and went back to reading, assuming that he would just leave. He didn’t. He stood lingering almost a minute after he had set the supplies down on the bedside table. Izuru flicked his eyes back at the brown haired boy, making him visibly flinch.

“Why are you still here?”

“Oh, s-sorry, I should probably get going.” The boy turned to leave, but stopped mid-step, turning back halfway. “Let me know if you need anything else, ok? Like any help or anything?”

“Mmm.”

Izuru was thankful to hear the door closing as the boy left. Alone with his studies at last. He let out a slow breath. A distraction. Perfect. This was the most relaxed he had felt all week, ironically, with much work to be done.

 

\--

 

The next day, the boy came in while Izuru was sleeping. He wasn’t active at all during the day since he still couldn’t walk or therefore exercise aside from treatment, so sleeping through the night was problematic since he still had energy to spare. Izuru had more or less fallen into a messy sleep schedule of just sleeping when he was tired and could no longer keep his eyes open, regardless of the time of day. He assumed that the boy had tried to be as quiet as possible in dropping off his research quota for the day, since he woke up with his supplies already neatly stacked on his bedside table and his work from the day before already gone. He only assumed that it was the same boy, since he had fallen asleep roughly around the same time he had come the day before. 

Oh well. At least he wasn’t being obtrusive.

 

\--

 

“Hey. You’re awake today.” The brown haired boy strode into Izuru’s hospital room at his usual time the next day. “Have you finished the work I gave you yesterday?”

Izuru swept his hair out of his eyes, still filling out the paperwork in his lap. “I’m just finishing. It shouldn’t take more than about fifteen minutes.”

The boy fidgeted awkwardly. “Do you mind if I stay until you’ve finished? I need to drop off your finished work with Matsuda to track your progress or else I’ll get in trouble with Murasame-senpai.”

“I don’t care.”

He hadn’t meant to sound rude. According to his observations of social gestures, when someone didn’t care it meant that they did not have a preference to the options they have been given. He did not have a preference as to whether or not the boy stayed. He could stay if he liked or he could leave. But Izuru sensed that he had done something wrong,  _ again _ , when he saw the boy’s face fall.

“Oh. Ok.”

He took a seat in the only place he could find, right next to Izuru’s bed. It was awkward, but it was only fifteen minutes. He may as well try and talk to him a little to make up for the miscommunication. He really didn’t want to, but he had always been taught that you can only compensate for mistakes by correcting them.

“What position are you on student council?” Izuru asked.

“Oh,” the boy said. “I’m nobody. I was only elected last minute since a male representative for my grade had to transfer out and they needed a member. They were pretty desperate.”

“You can’t be nobody if you were elected,” Izuru deliberately flattered, talking as he wrote. “What do you do?”

“Well, I mean, if you wanna get technical I’m pretty much just an errand boy. I don’t think Kirigiri-sensei pays much mind to me.”

He didn’t refer to Jin by his given name. Interesting.

“I-In fact, just delivering stuff to you is my only actual job at the moment,” the boy went on. “The other reps won’t really let me handle any of the other stuff. The... _ important  _ stuff.”

“That sounds to me like you’re letting yourself be undermined.”

“No, I don’t really deserve it. I think they’re right in setting restrictions. I’m just happy to be helping out student council in whatever way I can.” It was a well worded lie. He wanted to mean it, but he didn’t. This boy’s mindset was pathetic.  “I’m Hinata, by the way. Hajime Hinata. I'm a first year. I already know you, you’re Kamukura.” 

Hajime Hinata. Hajime meaning “beginning,” and Hinata, which can either be written as “sunflower” or “facing the sun.” It seemed a bit too cheerful a name for this awkward, self-deprecating boy. But it suited his appearance nonetheless. Izuru found it strangely pleasing whenever someone’s name matched up well with their appearance. “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Izuru said.

“Thanks. You too. I-I’m really sorry I’m having trouble talking.”

“You’re doing fine.”

“I was just…” Hinata started. “I was just a little nervous. In meeting you, I mean.”

Oh god.

Oh no.

He was one of these.

He wasn’t like the other members of student council who were used to Izuru’s presence and shared unspoken respect with him. Not at all. Hinata was just another ordinary.

But he went on regardless. “Y-you’ve probably heard this from a lot of people--

Oh yes. More times than he cared to assign a number to. Just another ordinary person who always fawned over Izuru because they loved him  _ so _ much. They admired his talent  _ so  _ much. He had always felt this way about anyone who complimented him, but he wasn’t sure why it offended him as much as it did. Allowing his talents to grow and improve them as much as possible was his life’s purpose, and he felt that it was his duty to pursue that purpose. But for some reason, it always bothered him when he received flowery praise directly, namely that of undaunted admiration. 

“--but, I mean, I just think you’re really amazing. I can’t even imagine what it must be like to be so talented in every field, but you make it look so easy. I actually got to go to the benefit concert that the school hosted for the officials, and your showcase was incredible.”

That benefit concert was only an excuse for everyone who had invested financial assistance into Kibougamine to be shown that it was still worth their money. Nobody dared bring it up. Most of them were on the edge, and their donations had grown a lot less generous.

“I look up to you so much, like, I can’t even say, and it’s such an honor to finally be able to meet you.”

Izuru’s handwriting began to grow hasty and scribbled. He would get a talking-to about it later, but he didn’t care. “Is it, now.”

“Yeah, it really is.”

“I’m done.” Izuru said flatly.

“Great!” Hinata jumped up from his chair, snatching the thick workbook that Izuru had completed. “I’ll take this down to the psychology department right awa--” he stopped as he flipped to the last page. “Um, Kamukura-kun, the last page is blank.”

“I said I’m done.” Izuru stated again. 

“No, you’re not. You have to finish this or I can't--”

“I’M DONE.” Izuru raised his finger towards the door. “I’ve finished the assignment. There is no reason for you to be here. Get out. Now.”

Hinata lurched backward, then just looked at the floor. Izuru knew Hinata wouldn’t question him. Anyone who admired him this much wouldn't dare. “O-ok. Sorry.” He rushed out of the room, Izuru’s work in hand. Upon his leave came the satisfying  _ shut _ of the hospital room’s door. 

Izuru flopped his head down on his pillow. He wondered if he had offended Hinata in any way. He probably wasn’t aware that he had done anything wrong, let alone meant to. Izuru didn’t really give a damn about his intentions. He was irritated. Ordinary people like Hinata were always irritating. They were boring. No substance whatsoever. How were people like him even accepted into Hope’s Peak Academy?

Maybe...no. Probably not. He was let into Student Council, after all. But judging from his demeanor, it could still be possible.

He decided not to busy his mind with the matter and rest with what little time he had left. After all, his least favorite part of the day was coming up. The time of day that he actually had to move.

 

\--

 

Hinata lingered outside of the hospital room for a moment. His pacing would turn it to minutes. He needed to go back and talk to Kamukura, but he couldn’t. He was nowhere near mentally prepared. Hell, it took him ten minutes every day to muster the nerve to go into that room to drop off his things. He had been rather relieved that one day that Kamukura had been asleep, as there were no mistakes to be made. He was just able to slip in and deliver the quota, no interaction necessary, no harm done. But on the days Kamukura was awake, he couldn’t do anything right at all. And now he had done something horribly wrong.

He didn’t know what had made Kamukura so angry. It showed in his bright red eyes that Hinata had offended him in some way. He just wasn’t quite sure how. He needed to go back and apologize. Or ask what he did wrong for future reference. Either way, he couldn’t return to the student council room with them finding out about sending an incomplete workbook to the psychology department. It wouldn’t be any use lying about it. They always found out about every little error, and his higher ups always found ways to use it against him without fail. They looked for it, too. Always. All because of his rank as a student. Though all things considered, he couldn’t really blame them at all.

But even with all that in mind, Hinata really didn’t want to go back and have to face Kamukura again. He didn’t know how to make up for his mistakes if he didn’t know what they were. And moreover, Kamukura’s demeanor was terrifying. His eyes seemed to pierce holes in Hinata’s chest the moment his voice gave a hint of hostility. He also knew that he couldn’t argue with him. 

Hinata sighed, finally giving into his anxiety. So he would get yelled at by Murasame, big deal. And he still had the whole school day ahead of him to get chewed out. Fine. This was his penance. His punishment for making an ignorant mistake and offending Kamukura.

Offending the (debatably) most important person in this school. 

Yeah, he hecked up. Big time. 

 

\--

 

Physical therapy was absolutely humiliating. Izuru should have been happy that once a day they were letting him walk, but it made him feel lower than the dust he was grinding down with his feet. It only reminded him how heavily reliant he was on other people because of his condition. It was exhausting too, both physically and mentally. Every day, the same exercises. Izuru would brace himself against a set of parallel bars, his physical therapist leading him back and forth across the room. It was unbearably painful starting out. His legs were weak, and at this point weren’t used to having Izuru’s full weight being put on them. His walking always followed a pattern: a few short steps, stumble, a few more short steps, stumble, fall. It was thoroughly degrading. On top of all of this, there was at least one person looking down on him. Watching him sweat and pant and try to walk like any fully functional human being. The most talented person at this school, maybe in Japan, or even the world, horrifically failing. 

_ Poor child. Poor boy. The Ultimate Hope who can’t even walk ten feet.  _

Izuru could almost smell the pity emanating off of the people watching. Izuru hated pity. 

He met with Jin and one of the doctors every couple of days to track his progress. So far it had been little to none, but Izuru didn’t worry. It had still been a relatively short time since he was diagnosed, so he knew that they would go easy on him.

Therapy went on for over an hour. Well, it was only supposed to run for an hour tops, but every day that he had to do physical therapy it ran for over an hour because the therapist either forgot or he didn’t care. It was even worse because time seemed to slow whenever he was in that room. But eventually, thank goodness, he was transported back to his room in his wheelchair, still panting and slick with perspiration. He needed help getting back into his bed, but he didn’t care. He was thankful to be lying down again. Eventually his breathing returned to normal, but he fell into a sort of rift where he was too tired to stay awake but too wound up to fall asleep. So he would curl himself up underneath the covers and wait until he had winded down enough to sleep.

On this particular day, right after being brought back when he was even more spent than usual, Hinata peeked his head into the room. “Kamukura-kun?”

“Mmm.”

“Can I come in?”

“Mmhm.”

Izuru wasn’t thrilled to see Hinata. It had been quite awkward ever since Hinata had slipped up in praising Izuru and was sent out of the room in a stern manner. Izuru knew that he was being childish for letting the resentment persist, but he felt it was necessary. Hinata was merely a messenger. It wasn’t as if they had to bond over this mess. 

“Did you finish your work from yesterday?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Yes,” Izuru said louder, eyes still closed. 

He heard the sound of papers being shuffled around. “You’re all red in the face. Did something happen?”

“Physical therapy,” he mumbled.

“Gotcha. I’m...really sorry.”

“For what?”

“For...this. I mean, what you’re...nevermind.”

Izuru was too tired to call him out. He was too tired to do anything but turn up his eyelids to see Hinata. And he noticed something.

“A-all I’m saying is is that it can’t be easy...I mean, heck, it wouldn’t be easy for me, that’s for sure.”

“Hinata-san.”

“I mean, I’m probably overstepping my bounds saying all this, and I’m really sorry--”

“Hinata-san.”

Hinata looked over at Izuru when he finally heard him. “What?”

“What is that on your face?”

He paused. “On my…” Hinata touched his fingers to the spot on his cheek. “Oh. Yeah. Uh. It’s not that big of a deal. It doesn’t hurt anymore.” 

There was a giant purple bruise scarring Hinata’s left cheek. It looked quite painful, like someone or something had outright struck him on the side of the face. “Did something happen?”

“No. It’s not important. I was just being incompetent, and another student council member caught me.”

“A council member did that to you?” Izuru asked.

“Nah, it’s ok. I was being careless. Um...it was about the quota that you didn’t end up finishing. I turned it into the psychology department thinking that just one page didn’t matter that much, that nobody would find out about it. But they always do anyway, so I dunno why I figured I could get away with it.”

Izuru listened, quickly processing what Hinata was saying. “You were assaulted because I didn’t finish my work for that day?”

“No, no,” Hinata waved his hands in front of his face. “It wasn’t your fault.”

Izuru raised an eyebrow. How was this not his fault?

“I shouldn’t have made you angry,” Hinata went on. “I’m not sure what I did, but I’m the one who started all this. I shouldn’t have agitated you.”

This boy struck Izuru as very strange. The polar opposite from the people he was used to meeting. He was boring, just like everyone else, but he was different. He was always looking for excuses about how everything was his fault to save trouble for others, instead of the other way around. He must have been the scapegoat that everyone else looked for.

“I’ve actually been meaning to apologize,” said the boy. “I’m really not sure what I said to you to make you angry, but I’m really sorry. I promise you it’ll never happen again.”

Izuru paused. He was reluctant, but he thought it fair to overlook the mistake since Hinata still didn’t know what he had done. “I accept your apology. I’m sorry that you were attacked.”

“No, it’s not--”

“Part of it is. Part of it is my fault. I apologize for being stubborn.”

“Uh...it’s ok. Really.”

Izuru poised himself so that he was leaning up against the pillow on his bed. “You said you had my quota for today.”

“Yup. I set it on your bedside table.”

“Thank you. I’ll start on it a little later.”

“Not feeling up to it right now?”

“Not really.”

Hinata sat down in the chair next to the hospital bed and began thumbing through Izuru’s completed work. “Kamukura-kun?”

“Yes?”

“If...if you don’t mind my asking, what did I say that made you angry exactly? Just so I don’t make that mistake again.”

“It isn’t important,” Izuru dismissed. “I shouldn’t have been short with you.”

“I’d still like to know.”

Izuru sighed. “Well, to put it plainly….I don’t much care for it when people try to flatter or praise me excessively.”

Hinata looked up from the stack of papers. “When they praise you?”

“I know that my purpose at this academy is to exercise and improve my talents to the best of my ability. I know that praise is good, it means that I’m doing well in my studies. If it comes from someone from the government, it means that they’re going to keep funding this school. And that in turn means Jin will be pleased with me.”

“Who’s Jin?”

“Headmaster Kirigiri.”

“R-right! Sorry.”

“But it’s when people try to praise me personally that gets to me. When they have no business with the Academy in doing so. Just because they hold a personal admiration for me. They praise my talents and accomplishments, tell me how much they admire me, but I feel as if they’re looking right through me. Like their admiration is empty. It all feels wrong.” He tilted his head back. “Like they see the Ultimate Hope but don’t see me.”

Hinata bit his lower lip. “Like, you’re worried that people you meet are only seeing you for your talents? And they can't look beyond them?”

“You could put it that way.”

“That...doesn’t really make much sense to me. I would give just about anything to be praised at this point. For any ability.”

“You made it into this school, did you not?” Izuru asked. “You must have been praised for something.”

“No...not really….”

“What is the talent that got you into this school? I haven’t been able to figure it out yet.”

Hinata’s pupils dilated, he looked to the left, and tugged at the hem of his dress shirt. He was about to lie. “I...it...it’s kind of...I mean, I’d rather not say, really. I’m not exactly proud of it.”

Izuru could respect that. Though he was suspicious. “Fair enough.” He lay his head back a little and shut his eyes. They felt quite sore and needed to rest.

“How’s hospital life treating you?” the brunette boy asked. “Besides physical therapy, I mean.”

“It’s not so bad,” Izuru responded. “It’s unbelievably dull, but bearable. I’ve only just begun blood treatment, but it’s not all that different than what I’m used to.” He placed a hand on his thigh. “It’s not as if I can leave anytime soon, so I may as well make the most of it.”

“At least the staff seems nice.”

“They’re alright, I suppose.”

“What about the food?”

Izuru crinkled his nose. “It leaves much to be desired. The breakfasts taste like the faculty rounded up the dead mice around the school and deep fried them.”

Hinata laughed. Izuru didn’t know why. He was merely stating a fact. Why should it be so funny? “Wow, that sounds pretty bad. I wonder if it’s worse than the school lunches.”

“I can guarantee that.” Izuru yawned and closed his eyes again.

“Are you trying to sleep?” Hinata asked. “I can leave if I’m bothering you.”

Izuru shook his head. “I don’t mind. In truth, I often sleep better when I’m listening to something. This hospital is as quiet as the grave, so I’ve developed a rather askew sleep schedule.”

Hinata shifted in his seat. “....Well, in that case I can keep you company, if you want.”

“Do as you like.”

Hinata did precisely that. 

It was empty conversation, all of it. Mostly small talk, just for the sake of making the most of each other’s company. Izuru found it rather pleasant, to be perfectly honest. He still struggled with social cues and recognizing what was appropriate to bring up and what was not. But he rather liked being in the company of someone that didn’t constantly nag him or praise him. Just a normal conversation. Is this what those felt like? 

After a while, Izuru felt as though he was nodding off enough to sleep. Hinata left him be and took his leave quietly, bidding him goodbye. Only a few minutes after he left, Izuru quickly fell asleep. 

 

 


	2. Graffiti

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains descriptions of bullying and humiliation, just as a heads up. Stay safe, everyone.

Izuru didn’t dread Hinata coming back the next day. Or the next day. Or the day after that. This was new. Their interactions were kept to a minimum on most occasions, but it was no longer awkward and resentful. Most days Hinata came to drop off Izuru’s things before physical therapy or treatment, but sometimes he arrived later. If that was the case, they usually spoke for a bit until Izuru was able to sleep. They didn’t talk about much. Mainly trivial things. Of course, there weren’t a lot of topics that didn’t seem trivial to Izuru anymore, but he accepted the company with open arms. He had fallen into a routine of asking Hinata how his day had gone, and most of the time he got one-sentence answers. But sometimes something vaguely resembling interesting would happen that would lead to conversation. For instance:

“My day wasn’t bad. Though I had a bunch of petitions shoved in my face all day, so that was a pain.”

“Who was protesting?”

“Oh. Just some people who were unhappy with how the school system is. I think it was about the prep academy.”

“Why would someone from the main course have concerns about the prep academy, I wonder?”

“I-I mean...they’re valid concerns, but I...I’m not really one to get involved in that sort of thing…”

Hinata tended to dance around various subjects in conversation. He never once mentioned the talent that had gotten him into the school. He avoided saying anything about his work in student council. He appeared to have confident stature and a sarcastic sense of humor, but once he opened his mouth it became very apparent that he thought very little of himself. He was constantly apologizing to Izuru for boring him, but Izuru was always able to wave it away. He clearly still felt intimidated by Izuru’s presence, which was a bother, but Izuru understood the apprehension. He was able to see the unspoken hierarchy.

He was able to ask Hinata about the school. It was like Izuru had an inside source. He never knew what the school was like since he wasn’t allowed to interact with most of the other students. Ironic, being the most important student at the school and not even being let onto most of the establishment. He had been told that it was too dangerous for him to mingle with the other students, and it wasn’t as if Izuru cared enough to question it. He hadn’t tried to leave because of the other students, but for other reasons. 

Hinata came to deliver work often enough that he had learned to time his visits so that he didn’t come right after physical therapy. That was when Izuru tended to be the most irritable, and treatment was usually a little while afterward. Izuru was thankful for this. He didn’t have to worry about offending Hinata by accident. 

Three weeks of treatment flew by. Hinata visited Izuru’s hospital room every day, so that made it a bit more bearable. Funny how that worked. A boring, no account boy keeping him going through treatment. He used to only able to get through physical therapy knowing that he would be able to sleep afterward, but now he looked forward to the possibility of getting to talk to Hinata.

Physical therapy eventually became easier. Sure, it had been roughly two months since he had been diagnosed and Izuru still couldn’t walk, but he was falling less. Overall it became much less physically demanding.

Izuru didn’t tend to remember people all that well. Especially those who he didn’t have ties to. That’s why he thought that Hinata was a new face, and the familiarity was just a sham. He had to get rid of faces to make room for new information. But spending a bit more time with him like this made him realize that he had, in fact, met Hinata before.

The doormat from the Prep Academy. He remembered.   

 

\--

 

_ I don’t think I can do this anymore. _

Why did these things always have to happen to him? Why did he have to feel this way about Kamukura?

Hajime asked himself these kinds of things quite regularly. Even more often since he had begun work as a student council member. 

_ Why am I here? What am I doing? What’s my purpose? Why am I finding cobwebs on the inside of the cuffs of my uniform blazer in the morning? Why am I the one who always has to clean the heating ducts in the Student Council room when it gets cold? _

First of all, he was only a first year, which made him automatically contempted by his upperclassmen. But to top it off, he was also a member of the Prep Academy.  _ The fucking Prep Academy.  _ The Reserve Course. That alone make the whole school hate him, but at least that was one thing that he and the rest of the school had in common. Oh well. It was a sacrifice Hinata was willing to make in order to attend the school. Even if it meant he was treated like a second class citizen.

It had always been Hajime’s dream to attend Hope’s Peak Academy. His whole life, he had been surrounded by kids who wanted to be professional athletes, scientists, artists, and aspired to other careers of the like, and honed their skills in order to do so. But Hajime’s goal was the starting point of all of that. Do not misunderstand, Hajime had always been an ambitious person. He knew that he wanted success, for people to know his name and commend him, but he had no idea for what. All of his heroes came from Hope’s Peak Academy, and Hajime could regale several stories of countless alumni of HPA who had graduated and moved on to be successful, some of them essentially running the world. Hajime didn’t know if he craved power or recognition, but he wanted what those alumni had. He wanted to have a talent. He wanted to be known for something. He felt like he was meant for something greater than a normal life.  

Hajime didn’t know what he had expected. Had he thought that his talent would someday come shining down on him through the clouds and bathe him in bright light as it was all laid out for him? Would he find it in a dream? Would he have an epiphany from reading a bumper sticker? Finding a talent had been a whole lot harder than he expected it to be. It wasn’t like he  _ wasn’t _ talented: he was just really, really mediocrely skilled at a lot of things. He could draw and sort of paint, but he couldn’t develop his own style. He could play soccer and volleyball, and dabbled in track and field here and there, but he could never make the team no matter how many times he tried out. He had even tried acting, but he never even managed to become a thespian. He had only cleared a handful of school auditions. He could also write and come up with compelling stories, but his formatting made his writing sound robotic, with no voice at all. He had trouble with music for similar reasons: he could play, but he couldn’t compose. Hajime figured that talent was something that would come naturally through lots of exploration and a little hard work. However, the years he spent in “self discovery” and utilizing that hard work landed him ending his last year of junior high with nothing to show for it. 

The shame was overwhelming.

The Prep Academy had been his escape. Somewhat. After a little bit of digging on the internet, mainly out of denial and desperation, he found out that students without an invitation to the Academy could still attend if they paid a fee and passed several entrance exams through the Prep Academy program. He was able to pass the entrance exams with flying colors, and his parents were pretty supportive of him right up until they found out how much exactly the yearly fee for attendance was. Hajime’s family wasn’t exactly wealthy, and the required amount of money would almost certainly launch them into debt. They never would have gotten behind it if Hajime hadn’t promised to help pay it off. 

So as a result, he was working two part time jobs to help pay for his tuition. He was also living in the dorms since living with his parents wouldn’t help their financial capabilities at all. He wasn’t even paying for the full HPA experience. The Prep Academy was almost completely segregated from the main course, plus curriculum was much more rigorous, and the homework load was absolutely ridiculous. However, Hajime had no intention of staying in the Prep course. If he kept his grades on point, maybe, just maybe they would move him up to the main course. Basically, when he wasn’t working a job shift or doing homework, he was studying. He had very little free time, and even that was stressful since the idleness made him uncomfortable.

It had gotten to the point that he felt uncomfortable when he wasn’t stressed.

_ Jesus, what has my life come to? Am I gonna start going grey by the time I’m twenty-something? God, I hope not.  _

And then there was him.  _ He  _ haunted Hajime, his presence triggered by everything he saw.  _ He  _ was never absent from his thoughts. Not while he was at the Academy. While he was a student here, he would never be free of him. Everything at every turn reminded Hajime of him. He tried to shake it off, knowing that he couldn’t let him slow him down. It would only have made him sad.

The best thing that had happened to him all year was being elected as a first year representative to the Student Council. And even that was pretty sad, since he wasn’t really so much a representative as he was just an errand boy. The whole last-minute selection seemed pretty sketchy from the start, since it seemed like the Student Council was specifically looking for a reserve course student to be a representative, which made no sense. Absolutely zero sense. On second thought, maybe it was just another vain attempt to trick the people funding the Academy that the main course and the Prep Academy didn’t hate each other and instead coexisted in miraculous fucking harmony (which technically made Hajime an errand boy  _ and  _ a poster boy). The selection had happened rather fast. All Hajime knew was that he had been recommended by one of his instructors and then  _ bam _ , the next day he was Student Council’s gopher. Hajime would have bet all the money he had earned in his time at the Academy that the Student Council could have drawn names from a hat and still have been satisfied with the candidate as long as they were apart of the reserve course.

Up to his armpits in debt, living in a shitty dorm with no heating or air conditioning, looked down upon by his peers, working two jobs in addition to schoolwork, trying to forget that  _ he  _ ever existed, and finally acting as the intern everybody hates for the Student Council.

He was attending the school of his dreams. So why did he hate his life?

It had to get better. It had to. He just had to find what his talent was and everything would completely turn around for him. 

To be fair, there was one thing that Hajime did like about his new school life. 

Hajime Hinata had been born female. He had been raised in dresses and skirts, his family had celebrated Hinamatsuri every year for as long as he could remember, and to top it off had a girly-ass given name. He had chosen the name Hajime because it meant “beginning.”  _ A new beginning, therefore a new me.  _ It also had a very nice ring to it paired with his last name. He had traded in his female school uniform for a male one when he was in his second year of Junior High, shortly after chopping off his hair. His parents didn’t take him seriously at first, and he had expected that, even if it did sting. However, all of his friends that he had in middle school knew him before he came out, and that was enough to send Hajime into a state of utter paranoia. What if they weren’t taking him seriously either? What if they still just saw him as his former self, just with shorter hair and a shirt and tie? Hajime wanted to feel valid, but thoughts like those kept holding him back from it. He only knew one person who he absolutely knew saw him as he was, the one person he felt valid around, who had been there for him for so long and knew him better than anyone else, but….well, he wasn’t around anymore. 

But now, Hope’s Peak Prep Academy would be a fresh start for him in that department. He had emailed the headmaster to ensure that his preferred name would be put into the school registry and traded in his female uniform for a male one. It was a lot of trouble, but the results were worth it. None of his classmates knew that he was trans. His instructors might have known, but that wasn’t too important. His school life was the only place where he could be who he was without having to worry. Well, he had to duck into a bathroom stall whenever he was changing for gym (everyone just dismissed it because they thought he was just shy) and it was absolute hell for him for one week every month, but other than that he didn’t have to feel like complete shit about who he was anymore. Just slightly less shitty, which was a significant start. He was seen for who he was without a shadow of a doubt. A boy. It was relieving as well as quite invigorating. 

So there was one good thing about his school life. 

Scratch that, two things.

 

Izuru Kamukura. 

 

Since Hinata was a member of the Student Council, he was allowed to know about Izuru Kamukura, Hope’s Peak Academy’s best kept secret. Of course, if he told anybody he’d be expelled and possibly imprisoned by the government for high treason, so the Academy could trust Student Council with the knowledge of his existence.

Kamukura was Hajime’s polar opposite, at least to the best of his knowledge. According to what he had heard from Murasame, Kamukura was the experimental subject for the Hope Cultivation Project. Harnessing the power of technology and neuroscience alone, the Academy had been able to create a being capable of mastering every talent in existence. The first time Hajime had heard about them, he thought it was just some bullshit story that Murasame had come up with to screw around with the errand boy. But when Hajime questioned the headmaster about it, he confirmed that it was true. He had only ever heard stories about Kamukura. About his accomplishments, about his demeanor (and from what he had heard Kamukura sounded like a scary person), Hajime ate up any information regarding him. Ok, so Hajime was more or less trying to stalk him. But did it really count as stalking when you’ve never even seen the person or know what they look like? And really, could you blame him? It was frustrating, knowing that the other members of the Student Council had interacted with Kamukura while he was left in the dark about this person cloaked in mystery, which automatically made them sound more cool. 

Well, left in the dark up until the third official Student Council board meeting that he attended. 

Kamukura probably didn’t remember, but Hajime did. 

Board meetings were really the only time that the Student Council actually put their ideas and plans to improve the school into full effect. Hajime was always late for them since the other members usually wanted coffee or tea when they had big meetings, so he was always the first one asked to bail from the school to make a mad dash down the street to get everyone coffee (“ _ Would you like a tray for that?” Lady, there is not a tray in the world that could save me now _ ). Hajime tried to keep speaking up to a minimum during these meetings, since he was afraid of saying something stupid and being shunned for the rest of the meeting before he could get to his main point. He had talking to the Council down to a science. Get to the point quickly, then shut your mouth.  

On that particular day, he had just gotten back from the coffee shop down the street and had somehow managed to make it back to the top floor without dying from asphyxiation. At least being a gopher meant that he got some exercise out of it. When he was asked to go get coffee, the meeting had usually already begun by the time he had gotten back. But this time, all of the council members were sitting around the table in the meeting room in absolute silence. Murasame tore his eyes away from the clock to snort at Hajime with his usual disappointment. “That certainly took you long enough.”

Hajime set down the tray of drinks in the center of the table. The other Council members, who all looked equally sour and impatient, began emptying the tray. “Senpai, what’s going on? I thought you guys would have started already.”

Murasame tapped his fingers on the table in a steady rhythm. “We would have started long ago if a certain someone had shown up by now.”

“We’re waiting on someone else?” Hajime asked, taking his seat, careful not to sit too close to anyone. “Did a new representative get elected or something?” He wouldn’t be surprised if he was being replaced. 

“No, not exactly,” said Murasame. “In a way, he’s already a student representative. It was Jin’s idea for him to join us. He figured that he might provide some worthy insight and ideas for us to use.”

“Who is it, though?”

Murasame didn’t have to answer him. He didn’t get a chance to. As soon as the words had left Hajime’s mouth, the door to the Student Council room slid open. Murasame’s head snapped up.

Standing in the doorway, in between two school officials which Hajime assumed were there to escort them, was another student. He looked rather peculiar, far from anything that Hajime had seen at the Academy so far. No, peculiar didn’t even do them justice. The student was clad in a black suit and tie, with their hands placed firmly in his pockets. They had long, flowing hair past their knees that was neither neat nor unkempt, and was colored a deep, ebony black. Their skin was pale, almost white, making their intense red eyes stand out even more. They wore a very disinterested expression, listless and unmoved. Their gender seemed very unclear. 

Hajime’s heart had nearly leapt into his throat upon seeing the student. Their whole aura was extremely intimidating, like their gaze alone was stabbing Hajime in the stomach repeatedly. He knew that it was impolite to stare, but he couldn’t help it. When the person’s eyes finally swept over Hajime, he looked away. 

“And there he is,” Murasame sighed. “Are you aware that you’ve held up this meeting for a full thirty minutes? What on earth were you doing that was so important that you couldn’t exercise punctuality?”

“I was reading. I at least wanted to finish the chapter I was on,” said the strange student. “It’s not as if you would start the meeting without me, so what’s the problem?”

“That is not the issue, Kamukura! We have important work that we need to be doing, and where are you!? Knowingly holding us up! Do the words ‘basic respect’ mean anything to you?”

Kamukura. 

Hajime immediately perked up when he heard the name. Could it be the same person? If he was escorted here by Academy officials, then he must have held some importance. Though, he didn’t look at all like how he had expected Kamukura to look. Nevertheless, Hajime could hardly ignore the fact that he might be in the same room as the most talented person in this school.

Maybe even in the world. So it was hard not to stare. 

“The work you do here has little significance, in case you weren’t already aware,” Kamukura said flippantly. “Jin and the other Academy officials only let you think your decisions are important and have an effect on how this school operates because they think it’s cute that you’ve deluded yourselves into believing that your ideas are valid.”

“And you call yourself the Ultimate Hope…” Murasame growled.

The Ultimate Hope. It really was him. 

“Oh come now. When have I ever called myself that?” said Kamukura, taking a seat near Hajime. “All I said was that I don’t see a point to this meeting. I’m only being honest.”

“Yes. Absolutely.  _ Wonderful.  _ You’ve voiced your opinions loud and clear, now can we please begin?”

Kamukura rested his chin on his palm. “Am I stopping you?”

It was true that he hadn’t known him for very long at all, but Hajime had never seen Murasame so outright pissed. He looked like he was about ready to tear Kamukura’s hair out of his scalp and strangle him with it. He looked like he could kill him with his bare hands and feel nothing. Murasame had never even gotten this angry with Hajime, and now he was positively fuming. Hajime was actually pretty impressed. 

Hajime could barely keep still throughout the entire meeting. Kamukura had chosen to sit in rather close proximity to him, so it was a little distracting having the most talented person at the Academy sitting right within touching distance of him. Izuru Kamukura for crying out loud, the very definition of talent. The personification of his admiration for this school, and yet---

Hajime was more than a little ashamed when his first thought after Kamukura sat down was  _ Wow, his hair looks really soft. _

Goddammit, why couldn’t he at least try to be more serious? 

But in all honesty, his hair really did look soft and shiny and perfect, draped around him like a big black curtain. He must have taken good care of it to get it like that. Hajime didn’t see a single split end on the whole thing. He seemed very put together, as expected of somebody shouldering so much talent. He moved quietly and gracefully, and even when he was standing still there was an air of grace about him. It didn’t make him any less intimidating, but it made it hard not to stare. Hajime had barely realized the meeting had started, and only did when he realized he had been staring at Kamukura for too long. Kamukura obviously noticed him staring, but didn’t address it. He either didn’t care or was already so used to being stared at. It wouldn’t be at all surprising. Throughout the meeting, he didn’t contribute much. He did, on occasion, look up and grunt listlessly whenever Murasame scolded him to pay attention. But Kamukura knew that Murasame couldn’t do a thing to him.

It was almost as if Kamukura was trying to play a game. Murasame didn’t see it, but Hajime did. Kamukura spoke the most whenever Murasame (or heck, any of the council members) got progressively annoyed with him. Like a game of See How Angry I Can Get The Student Council Before They Collectively Break Some Sort of Legal Violation. Pushing their limits. Nudging them towards the edge of the cliff with a long stick just to watch their reactions.

Fascinating. 

He had so many questions. So many things he wanted to ask Kamukura.  _ I’ll just approach him when the meeting is over. Shouldn’t be a big deal, right? People probably come up to him all the time. _

Hajime had forgotten to factor his own awkwardness into the situation.

After the meeting was over and neither he or Kamukura had contributed anything, (it felt like an eternity, even though Hajime had taken in none of it, being so distracted), he waited until Kamukura had left the room so it wouldn’t look like he was tailing him. Two Academy officials immediately took his side, walking at a steady pace on either side of him. 

He had forgotten about the damn Academy officials. 

Also he had forgotten everything he had wanted to ask Kamukura. 

Well isn’t that just great. 

The silence in the hallway didn’t make it any easier. The white linoleum made it seem even more ghostly quiet, like the white existed only to make things seem silent and isolated. The only noise was the sound of Kamukura’s shoes. 

Click.

Click.

Clickclickclick.

In rapid succession. His shoes must have been made of different material than Hajime’s, since his shoes didn’t make that sound no matter how hard he tried. Kamukura’s were probably a lot more expensive. 

He was about to round the corner. This was Hajime’s last chance. Following him any further would seem pretty sketchy, so if he was going to say anything, he would have to say it now.  _ You were toying with them, weren’t you? Was that meeting just a game to you? You weren’t toying with me though, right? Why? Wouldn’t I be the easiest one to mess with? _

The moment Hajime opened his mouth to inhale, Kamukura looked over his shoulder. His eyes, that thick color of blood, were enough to make the words stick in Hajime’s throat. They were looking him over, analyzing him, taking him in. 

_ Is this what you want? You want me to feel like a pawn, like the rest of them?  _

Hajime had paragraphs. Lists even, pages of things he wanted to say. If he could have just choked them out and allowed his feet to leave the floor. Unfortunately, that’s not what happened, so the most Hajime was able to get out was:

“Ueh.”

 

_ God in heaven, please kill me now.  _

 

Kamukura just sort of looked at him. Hajime couldn’t blame him. This must have looked pretty odd. Hajime also didn’t really know how to react, so all he could manage was a lopsided smile as he shrugged his shoulders. 

Kamukura turned around and continued walking as if nothing had happened. He flipped his hair over his shoulders as he did, just to make himself look that much better.  _ That conceited son of a bitch. Not even going to say anything, just going to walk away leaving both of us knowing who the most important person is here,  _ Hajime thought, biting his lower lip. Five seconds later, he hated himself for it. Who was he to ridicule someone so superior to him? It wasn’t his place, not even in his private thoughts. 

Hajime stood standing in the hallway for quite some time. Longer than was necessary.

 

\--

 

For a while after that, Izuru Kamukura often dominated Hajime’s thoughts. Though he wasn’t quite sure why. He couldn’t really decide if it was because Kamukura fascinated him or disturbed him. Maybe it was both. True, Hajime was absolutely terrified of Kamukura. However, he was always looking for an opportunity to see him again, blaming it on his duties as a Council member. No such opportunities arose.

Hajime was actually able to do some digging on Kamukura since their first encounter, just to put his mind at ease a little. Well, all the digging he could since he found out that most of it was classified. Hajime was lucky enough just to know about Kamukura’s existence; to even the main course, he was a well kept secret. The Student Council were the only ones who knew, and each member was under an oath of secrecy. Hajime didn't quite understand why it had to be that way, since he thought that the whole point of the Hope Cultivation Project was to benefit mankind with a talented individual that could act as a world leader. Why keep someone like that a secret? Maybe the world just wasn't ready for Kamukura’s mind games.  _ Poor guy. Years ahead of his time. _

A month would go by before Hajime would see Kamukura again. A month of obligations, schoolwork, and ultimately not being able to afford to think about a certain black haired person, since it would only interfere with said obligations and schoolwork. Their second interaction that Hajime had with Kamukura was a bit more unpleasant than the first.

It happened one day when Hajime was about to head off to work. Murasame stopped him in the hallway.

“Hinata, wait a moment.”

No honorifics. Apparently Hajime wasn’t even worth the extra syllable. 

“Something came up in the Student Council room today, would you take care of it before going home?”

“What happened?”

“Oh, some punks decided to vandalize some of our equipment. I’d appreciate it if you could clean it up.”

“Um….” said Hajime, “I was actually going to head to work, my shift starts in less than an hour--”

“It shouldn’t take long. Especially if you have less than an hour.” Murasame plopped a ring of keys into Hajime’s hand. “The gold key is for the Student Council room and the silver one is for the custodial closet. Good luck.” Murasame ceremoniously walked away without saying another word. 

Hajime’s mouth was hanging wide open.  _ You cheeky bitch! You’re not even going to send anyone over to help me? I have to get to work! _

Well, all the more reason to get it done quickly. His boss would probably give him all sorts of hell for being late for his shift since they were short on staff, but that was better than getting humiliated by Murasame in front of the entire Council for not doing it. After all, he had more of an image to uphold at school. He could always find another job. 

The Student Council room wasn’t far off. The janitor’s closet was on the way there, so Hajime went there first to pick up some supplies. He came back out with a bucket of water, some dish soap, and a couple of cleaning rags. Hajime hardly hesitated to unlock the door to the Council room.  _ Alright, time to assess the damage.  _ With a familiar click and a shove, the door to the Council room opened and Hinata reached over to flick on the lights. They hummed with static, long overdue for a lightbulb change.

And there was the damage.

Oh the damage.  

The entire room had been defaced with what looked to be bright red sharpie, with the occasional black and hot pink. The desks had been scribbled on with various expletives, and you could barely see the wallpaper designs anymore due to all of the scribbles. Even the linoleum floors had been inked in. It was like being trapped on a sheet of sketch paper. He was probably going to have to call in late to work after all. It looked pretty bad, but that was before Hajime read what the graffiti said.

He was only prompted to when he saw his name written on one of the desks.

_ Hajime Hinata. _

_ Hajime Hinata. _

There it was again.

_ Was somebody ranting about me? _

His eyes widened as he became aware of the contents of the messages. 

 

_ Fucking prep school kid _

_ Conceited bitch _

_ Don’t get cocky _

 

Everywhere he turned, it just got worse.

 

_ Hajime Hinata sucks the headmaster’s hairy dick that’s how he pays for his tuition _

_ Go kill yourself you worthless piece of shit _

 

All of it. All of the graffiti was about him.

 

_ You’re so pathetic _

_ Fucking rich kid riding on his parent’s money _

 

No. No. It’s fine. He couldn’t afford to let it get to him. He had expected this kind of discourse when he joined the Student Council. After all, he was an outsider. This couldn’t not happen.

 

_ Go die nobody would care _

_ We don’t need you here _

_ Leave student council _

_ Go die  _

_ Die Hajime Hinata  _

_ Die _

_ Die  _

_ Kill yourself _

 

It was alright! This was fine. He just needed to clench his fists tighter, bite his lips harder, and not cry. Not crying was crucial.  _ Don’t you dare. Don’t you fucking dare start crying.  _

With shaky hands, Hajime set down his bucket of now soapy water on a nearby desk. He might as well start with the desks anyway, since those seemed like they needed the most attention. Trying to ignore the vulgar messages that the vandalism was shouting at him, Hajime kept scrubbing away at the marker. It didn’t seem to be coming off. So it  _ was  _ permanent marker after all. Oh well, he just needed to put more pressure onto it, or he might need to go get some rubbing alcohol--

Hajime stopped and looked at the drawing on the desk he was trying to erase. He hadn’t closely examined it. Somebody had drawn a crude caricature of him, terribly out of proportion with minimal effort put into it. The character appeared to be stark naked with heavy emphasis on the genitals, hanging from a rope by it’s neck with x-ed out eyes and it’s tongue hanging out. 

The caption read  _ Hajime Hinata: The only thing he’s good for. _

That tore it. That tiny, tiny drawing. Hajime couldn’t even see it now, as his vision had been blurred with tears. 

It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. 

Hajime wiped his eyes on the sleeve of his blazer, pressing the cleaning rag harder and harder onto the desk. It was hardly making a dent, even as his movements became more erratic. 

_ So this is how they see me.  _

_ After how hard I’ve worked, this is how they all see me. _

_ As a joke.  _

It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. 

It was ok. This was normal. He was a member of the Reserve Course, after all, so it was already normal to be universally hated for it. He was a hated outsider, invading familiar territory of higher beings and contributing nothing. It was only normal that this was happening. It was only normal that he was hated. It was only normal that some people hated him with such a passion that they wanted him dead. 

After all, he was just…

Just…

He didn’t know what he was….

 

Hajime collapsed onto the desk, not even trying to quiet his sobs. It didn’t feel good to openly weep like this, but he couldn’t help it. The tears kept loudly flowing, along with a barrage of snot and spit. A few screams might have escaped too. Disgusting. It was getting all over his uniform.

So hard. God, he had tried so hard. He had passed the tests, done the paperwork, done all of his homework and more, went to every meeting, went to every shift to pay for it all. He had tried harder than anyone at this fucking school, and this was his fucking reward. What if  _ he _ could see him now? Would even _ he _ ridicule Hajime for being so worthless? All he had wanted to do was go to this school and be someone, the school that he loved so much, with the people he admired more than anyone--

No.

This wasn’t a school.

_ This is my purgatory. It has to be. _

 

Hajime attempted to pull himself together. He could hear his own voice in his breathing, it was so heavy. He felt extremely light headed, and he was seeing colors just from sitting back up.

_ Would it be so bad? _

_ Would it be so bad if I just disappeared?  _

_ Would anything change? _

_ Would he be able to forgive me? _

Well, it was obvious from these messages that nobody would miss him.

_ I have a bottle of ibuprofen in my medicine cabinet. But would that be enough to kill me? _

_ Jumping off of my balcony would be too obvious. _

_ I’d probably have to write a note to my parents. Maybe enclose the money I earned for this month.  _

Suddenly, he felt another presence near him. A darker, more elusive presence. He turned around, wiping his eyes again so that he could see the person leaning in the doorway. So he could see that same, unmoved expression barely hidden by a mess of long black hair. His red eyes nearly glowed underneath the dark veil, and were gazing directly at Hajime. 

Kamukura. 

Hajime nearly fell out of his seat in surprise.

Kamukura just stared at him. His gaze looked more inquisitive than judgemental. 

Hajime realized how ridiculous he must look, red in the face which was dripping with snot and tears, some of its residue clearly visible on the sleeves of of his blazer. There was no use in trying to cover it up. “Um,” Hajime’s voice cracked. “Sorry...d-did you,” he gulped, “did you need to use this room?”

Kamukura’s expression didn’t change. Then his eyes wandered to the rest of the room, scanning the graffiti strewn across it. He lingered only for a moment, then left. Hajime was alone again.

Maybe he could take this opportunity to calm himself down a little. Well, there was no way in hell Hajime was cleaning this up. And if Murasame gave him shit about it, even the other Council members were bound to see that Murasame was fucked in the head for making him do this. And if not, it wouldn’t even matter. Maybe he would leave a note for Murasame explaining the situation. He could still make it to work on time if he hurried. 

That is, if he was even around anymore when it came time to leave for his shift. It really depended.

He just needed to step out the door and put it all behind him. Gather his things back up, dust himself off, walk through the door--

He was met in the doorway by the same black haired boy. 

He was carrying several transparent bottles and something that looked like large rolls of poster paper. They nearly walked right into each other. Kamukura stood his ground, but Hajime jumped backward upon almost making contact. He was in such close proximity with somebody who was literally the embodiment of talent. How could he not?

“Ah! K-Kamukura-kun, I-I’m so sorry, I didn’t see--”

“Save your apologies.” Kamukura had responded to him. That was a first. Just as Hajime was about to make way for him, Kamukura shoved a bottle of something into Hajime’s hands.

“Um…” Hajime was having trouble processing all of this. “What is this?”

“It’s hand sanitizer,” said Kamukura, pushing past Hajime and setting the rolls of paper on a nearby desk. “Every classroom has it. It’s alcohol concentration should be enough to get felt marker off of linoleum, and hopefully the desks.” Kamukura gathered his long hair into a single bundle, putting it up out of his eyes and tying it. 

Hajime was in awe. Was Kamukura...was he trying to help him? 

Kamukura grabbed a sponge, rolled up the sleeves on his black blazer, and glared at Hajime. “Are you going to help me or not? I didn’t come in here to clean all of this up myself.”

Without thinking, Hajime nodded dumbly. He wiped more tears from his eyes so that he could see and grabbed a sponge. “You said this would work on linoleum?”

“Did I stutter?”

“N-no.” Hajime knelt to the ground, mostly trying to avoid Kamakura's eyes. That guy was terrifying. 

The hand sanitizer worked unexpectedly well. Hajime was surprised with how quickly the marker came off of the tiles. It took a lot of willpower not to read what the messages had to say about him, but it was easier since the alcohol in the sanitizer was getting it cleaned up quickly. When he looked over at Kamukura, he was usually scrubbing away at one of the desks. Occasionally he left the room and came back with more things, but that was it. Hajime wanted to say something, but resolved it was best to remain silent. 

So it remained silent.

Hajime and Kamukura worked in silence for close to an hour. Close to an hour Hajime had to stare at those hateful, disgusting messages. It was painful, but it was soon washed away in a sea of hand sanitizer. Like the hate was being erased in one fell swoop. That didn’t make things ok though, things were far from ok. Neither Hajime or Kamukura looked up at each other, the former being too afraid to. He only dared when he heard the latter speak again.

“You.”

Being the only person that Kamukura could be addressing, Hajime looked up. “Yes?”

“I’m done with the desks. Will you help me with the wallpaper?”

“The wallpaper?” 

“We could spend another hour trying to scrub the marker off of the wallpaper that’s already up and damage it, or we could put up new wallpaper in half that time.” Kamukura held up one of the large rolls of paper he had brought in. So that’s what that was. He tossed a large paint brush over to Hajime. “It’s more efficient with two people. Start by brushing the glue onto the walls.” 

Alrighty then. 

 

\--

 

“Kamukura-kun?”

“What is it?”

“Can--err, may I ask you something?”

“Go ahead.”

“Um…” Hajime paused to place the wallpaper, careful not to wrinkle it. He and Kamukura had gone far too long without saying a word to each other. “It’s about what happened the other day. In the Student Council board meeting.”

“What about it?”

“Well…” Hajime pressed the wallpaper harder, careful not to leave any creases. “I noticed that you were….I’m sorry--”

“Stop apologizing. It’s irritating and it’s a sign of weakness.”

“Oh, sor---I mean uh, ok.” Bad start. “What I meant was, you were toying with them, weren’t you?”

Kamukura halted in putting up the wallpaper quite suddenly, looking over at Hajime with an accusatory glance. “Care to expand?”

“It seemed to me...I don’t know…” Hajime reached up to flatten the paper further. He might need a chair to stand on to reach up all the way. “You didn’t care about the meeting, right? I could tell you weren’t interested, and I don’t blame you at all really. You seemed more interested in the Council members themselves.”

“Go on.”

Hajime pulled up a chair. “You looked like you were counting. At how many times you could set them off. You remember how pissed they were at you. And it was happening often enough that you could make it into a game, right? So...were you just toying with them?”

Kamukura stared at Hajime. Not in a condescending way, more of a contemplative, mildly impressed way. “You have good observation skills.”

“So you were?”

Kamukura sighed. He pulled up a chair alongside Hajime. “I don’t care about the Student Council or it’s priorities. None of it matters to me. They’re about as interesting to me as a flock of chickens running around with their heads cut off.” Kamukura reached up with Hajime to flatten the wallpaper all the way up to the ceiling. “Quite frankly, the only thing I care about is alleviating boredom. If they can do that much, they’ll be useful to me. And if the only way I can achieve it is through little games, then so be it. I have no problem with them being my pawns. My surroundings are much more interesting when I can control them.”

Hajime’s stomach turned as he accidentally brushed Kamukura’s arm.

He gulped. 

“Can I ask you something else?”

“Go ahead.”

“Why not me?” Hajime asked. “Why didn’t you use me as a pawn either? You didn’t try to provoke me at all.”

Kamukura gave Hinata his usual scowl. “You had nothing to offer me. You were too quiet, and too easily humbled at that.” He finished pasting the paper and jumped down from his chair to move it. “I would have become bored with you immediately. You’re too easy to manipulate.”

Ouch. He wasn’t wrong, though.

“Ok. That’s fair.”

They worked in silence for a while longer.

“You really are a pushover aren’t you?”

Hajime looked up. “Excuse me?”

“This graffiti is about you, isn’t it? You’re the member from the prep academy.” Kamukura finished setting the wallpaper on his side. “And you were told to clean it up.”

Hajime clenched his fists.

“This isn’t the first time you’ve let yourself be undermined by the likes of Murasame. You barely speak, you don’t even try to contribute, and you put up with an unjust amount of work and are even willing to tolerate following orders at your own expense, hoping that it will all add up to finally being recognized,” Kamukura went on. “You’re nothing more than a hollow doll who would throw away his own well being and self respect like paper into a trash bin for the sake of their own ego. And what do you become? A doormat.”

Hajime wanted to argue with Kamukura. The words hurt, and he wanted to be able to tell him off, but the words only hurt because they were true. “You think I don’t know that?”

“No, I’m well aware. What confuses me is that you still let yourself be treated as such while knowing of where you stand in this whole twisted arrangement. How you can go on living like this, knowing that no matter how hard you try all you’ll ever be is an outsider. How you can knowingly live like a sniveling brat waiting to be fawned upon with attention and only receiving--”

“Then why are you helping me!?”

He hadn’t meant to yell. He wanted to punch himself in the face for lashing out at Kamukura like that. Who was he, a member of the reserve course with no discernable talent, to raise his voice at the personification of talent itself? Nevertheless, he straightened himself out. “If I’m so pathetic that you can’t even stand to look at me, then why did you decide to help me?”

Kamukura stood motionless for a moment, contemplating Hajime. Then he began walking towards him.

_ Wait, what are you-- _

He stopped in front of Hajime, inches away from his face. They had never been this close. It didn’t help that it reminded Hajime of how beautiful Kamukura looked. “Beautiful” can be a loose term depending on the context, but Hajime believed that he had the right to call Kamukura beautiful. It wasn’t only that Kamukura was every talent imaginable culminated into one being, but that definitely contributed. He was beginning to see past that, and look more at how his hair fell over his eyes. His glowing red eyes had become more soothing for Hajime, peeking through the dark curtain of black hair. Then there was the way he carried himself with such fierce serenity. Everything about Kamukura was so calming, yet Hajime was terrified of him. But no amount of fear could deny that Hajime badly wanted to bury his head into Kamukura’s soft hair and fall asleep.

_ What is this called again? _

“Because your eyes scream change,” Kamukura said.

“What?”

“As pathetic as you are, you aren’t content with things staying the same. That’s the only thing that sets you apart from the rest. You know that the system is corrupted, but aren’t content with leaving it as is. The entire Student Council, along with the rest of the godforsaken school are terrified of change. That includes the staff. And people who aren’t able to cope with change always end up bolted to one place in a world that is constantly changing without finding a place in society.” He brushed a strand of hair out of his face. “You on the other hand crave change. You’re not afraid of it, but you’re afraid to make it happen.”

“I’m--” Hajime started. He quickly swallowed the rest of his words. “I can’t change anything. Not how I am now.”

“How do you need to be?”

“I need to be able to be happy with myself,” said Hajime. “I need to change myself first before I can change anything else. If I don’t, then nothing I do will be taken seriously.” 

Kamukura had his head tilted upward so that he was looking down at Hajime. He didn’t respond, only stared. The worst thing about it was that even without speaking Hajime knew that Kamukura was judging him. Judging him hard.

Kamukura pushed past him, brushing against Hajime’s shoulder and making his stomach turn all over again. “The rest of the wallpaper shouldn’t take long.”

 

They both work for another twenty minutes or so until the wallpaper was pasted. Neither of them spoke to each other except for the occasional “hold that end please,” or something of the like. When the wallpaper is finished, neither of them say anything. They both stared at the newly cleaned room that looked untouched to begin with. Kamukura undid his hair tie and left the room without another word. Not even a glance. Hajime couldn’t tell if it was out of quiet rage or disgust or indifference, but any of those would be equally terrifying. 

At first Hajime just stood in that empty room, letting the experience sink in. He had missed his work shift. He might as well just call his boss and tell him the situation and hopefully not get fired, maybe go back to his dorm and study. Actually, maybe curl up on his bed and forget that any of this even happened. Maybe stay like that for an hour, maybe two. He couldn’t cry anymore. He was too emotionally exhausted to give any more of a reaction. It was still unnerving to think that underneath all that wallpaper, there were people screaming at him. He thought about it the whole walk back to his dorm room. He was too dazed for it to seem like very long of a walk. He had only blinked, and then he was in front of his door one second and lying face down on his bed the next. 

Too much was going on in his head. For once he didn’t have the willpower to get up and study. He just….he just wanted to think.

_ Pushover. _

_ Boring. _

_ Easily manipulated.  _

 

_ Yup. That’s me.  _

 

Hajime didn’t disagree at all. He was a pushover, he was controlled by everyone, and he gained nothing from it. But it couldn’t stay that way forever. Nobody would want him to die forever. Things would change, just as long as he was able to. 

Why was it that when he had said that to Kamukura, it sounded more believable than it ever had in the past? How could his presence make him believe that things could change?

How could it have made him have hope again? 

Maybe it was resentment. Maybe it was knowing that Kamukura was right. Perhaps it was the urge to prove him wrong. To prove everyone wrong. He hadn’t felt like this in a long time.

_ Would I have really tried to kill myself if Kamukura hadn’t shown up? _

_ Nah, I have more self control than that.  _

Hajime sat up. He stayed like that for a second, and then flopped his face back down on his pillow. 

_ Shit. _

_ This isn’t happening.  _

_ I am not starting to like him.  _

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow. Um. I haven't updated this in a while. (I'm sorryy, I thought I would have the time to update regularly but I got super busy with school when I started this chapter and sort of forgot about it. I can't promise that I'll update this again any time soon since I have some things with the plot to sort out, but I'll do my best.)
> 
> Feel free to leave comments or kudos if you enjoyed. Thanks for reading!


	3. Garden

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hwoof....ok, yeah it...it's been a while. Sorry about that, guys.  
> This was kind of a hard chapter to write, and I wanted to wait until DR3 finished airing since I thought it might provide me with some better setting material...anyway, sorry this took so long! I'm also sorry to say that this chapter doesn't have a ton of plot, it's more just me mentally preparing myself for actually diving further into the story. I think I've got a solid plan for the ending now.  
> Anyway, hope you enjoy! See you next time!

“Good morning, Kamukura-kun!”

Hinata entered Izuru’s hospital room looking happier than usual. Normally Izuru was greeted with a dour-faced, meager albeit earnest attempt at a smile, but today it seemed more genuine. And for some odd reason, he was able to come in much earlier. He also wasn’t in uniform, and instead sported a green sweatshirt and denim jeans.

“Good morning,” Izuru mumbles. It actually came out as more of a groan than he would have liked it to. He was a bit tired and not at his best for socialization, due to his aforementioned sideways sleep schedule.  _ Not moving all day = not using energy = not getting tired = not being able to fall asleep _ . Simple equation. He slept when he was tired, and last night (in the loosest sense of the term) “when he was tired” happened to be at five a.m. He wasn’t even able to watch the sun rise from where his one, tiny window was. So although he had woken up late, he was still nodding off. When he was finished with his work for the day he would probably try to go back to sleep. After being in trapped in the hospital for a little over a month, trying to get to sleep every day was Izuru’s most entertaining challenge yet. It was also the most rewarding, since sleep always felt better and more liberating than it ever had.

“It seems kind of unfair that the Academy is making you do this much work on a Sunday too.” Hinata plopped a thick stack of papers on Izuru’s bedside. For some reason, today’s stack included something that looked like a canvas and a long, thin, cloth bound pouch. 

“Oh,” Izuru said rather vacantly. “Is that why you’re here so early?”

“Yeah, sorry. Did I come at a bad time? Should I let you sleep?”

“No, that’s alright. If I fall asleep now I won’t wake up until this evening when the work is due.” 

“Valid point.” Hinata fidgeted a little. “I can’t really stay long. I’m busy today.”

“Do you have to work?”

“No, actually. My shift got cancelled, so I’m going to go get coffee with a friend of mine. Though knowing her, she’ll probably be late anyway.” 

So Hinata did have friends. Or at least  _ a _ friend. It didn’t affect him, but Izuru was a bit relieved knowing that Hinata had a life outside the Student Council. “I’m probably not very good company anyway. I haven’t been able to sleep much.”

“I’ll leave you alone, then.” Hinata clipped his backpack shut and headed for the door. “I’ll be back later to pick up the workbook and stuff. Get some rest if you get done early.”

“Thank you.”

Hinata shut the door behind him.

Normally, Izuru hated it when people started getting too chummy with him. No, it flat out made him sick to his stomach. It was usually because the said individual was deliberately trying to get closer to Izuru. He never asked for the attention. He never wanted it.  _ You only want to get close to me because you’ll gain something from it, won’t you? Or perhaps you want us to be friends? I don’t need a weak, monotonous, boring stuffed shirt of a human clinging to my person at all times. That would only slow me down.  _ Izuru wouldn’t necessarily say that Hinata was trying to be Izuru’s friend, since the former was well aware of the hierarchy separating the two of them. The embodiment of talent and a reserve course student. But that fact didn’t stop Hinata from being friendly, while not becoming a friend. They couldn’t be proper friends as it was. 

Izuru looked down at the work piled onto his bed that was waiting to be finished. Honestly, he didn’t mind this. He didn’t mind the talking. Or the smiles he received. Or the friendly banter. None of it was deliberate. Hinata wasn’t trying when he was friendly, he just was.  _ What is that like, I wonder? Not having to put on an act to get what you want?  _ Izuru couldn’t remember the day he forgot how to stop pretending. Or what differentiated a mask from his actual face.

Izuru sighed and flipped through the pile of papers he had been given. It only took him a minute or so to get the gist of the basic instructions. 

Portraits. Well, that certainly explained the canvases and sketch paper and the pouch of pencils and pens. But Izuru had drawn portraits before. Why did he need to do them again? Stuck to the bottom of the canvas was a post-it note from Matsuda. 

_ Create 100 drawn portraits by the end of today. Every ten drawings must be composed of a different medium. Half of them must be drawn from life. -Yasuke _

_ P.S. Sorry the hospital staff is so fucking condescending. That would drive me a little nuts too.  _

Izuru’s brow furrowed. Drawn from life? But who was he supposed to draw? It wasn’t as if fifty people came waltzing into Izuru’s ward room on a regular basis, and he wasn’t allowed outside either. Well, the note didn’t specify that the each portrait had to be a different person. Izuru had photographic memory. He could just draw the people that he knew and say that it was “drawn from life.” It would be cheating, but Izuru wasn’t in the mood for abiding to the criteria. 

_ With proper reference, this could be manageable.  _ Said reference was even provided if he needed it through several facial anatomy charts. He could do one portrait every ten minutes or so. Ten minutes multiplied by one hundred made for roughly 160 hours. Far more time than he had. 

He would just have to be faster. 

It was times like this that Izuru was reminded that he was artificial, and it made him feel like a machine. Like a machine, he did what he was told without fail or falter. Like a machine, he regularly upgraded himself to become faster, better, and more efficient. Like a machine, he strived for only one purpose. Producing results.

And during a state of repair, he had to work twice as hard for the same results. 

 

\--

 

Yasuke was almost sure of it. He hadn’t been before, but he was now. 

He would be flat-out lying if he said that he hadn’t had doubts about the nature of this whole mess of a project. It seemed unethical enough to him that the school would have the nerve for human experimentation. He had had no idea how long the Kamukura project had been going on, and apparently he was one of only a few people who knew about it. For that matter, he had extremely mixed feelings about what, exactly, Jin Kirigiri had asked Yasuke to put the subject of said project through. Kirigiri had told him to look at it as kind of an “emergency drill.”

An emergency drill that had lasted for almost three months. The epitome of a stretch. The timespan wasn’t too much of an inconvenience, since Kamukura could continue his studies while still in simulation, but it felt unethical. It didn’t matter what how good their abilities of coping were, deliberately putting anyone through this kind of mental strain for this long just felt plain cruel. He had also been worried about the simulation registering in low quality and therefore not being up to snuff and thus shattering the illusion of incapacitation, but Fujisaki and Gekkougahara had done a surprisingly bangup job of the whole thing (even though they hadn’t been told what it was for). Kamukura didn’t seem to suspect anything, which was even more impressive. Super High School Level Forensic Observation could catch it almost immediately.  And he seemed to be doing fine, functioning normally, no cause for alarm. But that wasn’t what had been weighing on his mind ever since this “emergency drill” lifted it’s feet off the ground. 

Easter Egg Boy. And he was going to finally address it today.

Chihiro Fujisaki was a very timid individual. Yasuke was never sure how to address them, since they regularly alternated between a girl’s uniform and a boy’s uniform, and didn’t seem to call anyone out on anything. Yasuke figured that Chihiro would get much too flustered to even function should he ask, so he didn’t bother. Their shyness annoyed Yasuke a little, but not to the point where he wouldn’t ask them to meet in the science lab after school hours and talk about the easter egg.

They sat across from Yasuke, today in a female uniform, folding their hands neatly in their lap. “G-Good Afternoon, Matsuda-senpai.”

“Afternoon, Fujisaki. Listen, I have a few questions about that VR that you finished coding with Gekkougahara a few months ago.”

“Is there something wrong with it?”

“No, no, nothing like that….it’s been operating past my expectations, actually. There’s just something that’s been bothering me about it.” He reached into his bag and pulled out the screenshots he had printed. He slid them across so that Fujisaki could see them. “Do you remember coding someone like this into the simulation?”

The boy in the pictures looked fairly unremarkable. He had brown, spiky hair and skin that was slightly tanned. Sure, he looked unremarkable, but upon seeing him Fujisaki's eyes immediately widened. “No, I...h-hold on a moment, um, s-sorry…” They quickly dug into their backpack and produced a black laptop, booting it up. “The file should be here somewhere....” Yasuke leaned forward to see an open file of images of the members Student Council, several doctors, and countless other students. “No, he’s...he’s not here. I never coded in anyone like that. Miaya-chan and I share this file, so I don’t think she’d know about it either.”

Yasuke sighed. “That’s what I figured. The student database refused to recognize him, which is pretty suspicious in itself. What’s even stranger is that he looks like he’s from the Reserve Course, judging by the uniform.”

“We coded in the building and all of the students, but why would an extra person just show up like that? And from the Prep Course, for that matter, we coded the prep course so that they couldn’t leave the prep academy….” Fujisaki’s expression turned gravely serious. It was obvious they weren’t used to mistakes in their coding. “Matsuda-kun, you sent me memory scans of the subject that you’re using. I coded the reality so that the rest of it would code itself based on the subject’s association of memories with certain places. Do they know this person? Perhaps a friend of theirs from outside the school?”

_ No, that’s impossible. Nobody is allowed to know about this particular subject _ . But Yasuke couldn’t say that. “I don’t think that’s the case. If it was, a name would have come up. Our subject doesn’t have any memories of this person prior to meeting them.”  

It was too late in the game to fix this. This boy had interacted with Kamukura. He couldn’t just be erased.  _ Dammit. Shit. I should have brought this up with them earlier. _

“Thank you for your time, Fujisaki-san.” Yasuke slid out of his chair to leave and bowed politely. “I’ll ask Gekkougahara as well. I’m sure we can easily get this resolved in time.”

Fujisaki forced a nervous smile. “Y-yes! I’ll look into it too! Please take care, Matsuda-senpai!”

“You too.”

 

\--

 

“Hey, I’m back. I know I’m early but I forgot so-wooaah.”

The sun was significantly lower in the sky by the time Hinata came back. Izuru hadn’t been watching the clock or paying any attention to the time. He had been too absorbed in what he was doing. And looking up from what he was doing, he realized how odd this all must have looked. Portraits were strewn all over his bed, some were littered on the floor, basically used sketch paper everywhere. His eyes were red and puffy most likely from not blinking for the duration of his work, and he was unseemingly hunched over with his nose in very close proximity to the paper (which may have been why it was getting more difficult to erase). His eyes hurt and his vision took some time to adjust when he looked up. The first thing Izuru saw was Hinata, looking at him slack-jawed in awe. 

“Did you….did you draw all of these?”

Izuru nodded. Though it struck him as a rather stupid question. Of course he drew them, who else was in the room but himself?

“But...how the...oh my God.” Hinata picked up the portrait Izuru had drawn of a teacher, one that Hinata had met with a few times before, Tengan-sensei. “They...they look like photographs.”

“That was my intent,” said Izuru, tossing another finished drawing to the ground without looking up.

“How many of these did you do?”

“I was assigned one hundred drawings.”

“And...how far did you get?”

“I have about fifteen left to do.”

Hinata just about stumbled backward. “You….you did eighty-five of these drawings? Just in the time I was gone?”

“Yes.” Izuru still didn’t look up.

“.....Woah.” Hinata stared at Izuru as he scratched away at the pad of paper he had cradled on top of his knees. “Well….uh...don’t...forget to blink, I guess.”

“And why would I need to do that?”

“Aren’t your eyes tired?”

“I was once awake for four days trying to program a fairly primitive artificial intelligence, this is nothing.”

“....Oh. Alright then.” Hinata swept his eyes around the room. “Well...I just came back because I think I left one of my homework papers here. I must have mixed it in with the documents I gave you by accident. Did you happen to find anything with my name on it in the stack I gave you?”

Izuru tossed another drawing to the side. “No.”

“Ok. Um. I’ll see you tomorrow then.”

Izuru was so engrossed in the portraits he could barely hear Hinata. It’s true, he was getting tired of drawing. But he was a little frustrated too. 

The drawings seemed to be….lacking.

The features weren’t quite right with the people he had drawn from life. He could tell just by looking. Even though Izuru had a good memory, it wasn’t so good that he could remember every single feature on a person. The drawings just didn’t quite look like the person. You could tell who it was, it was just….it didn’t look quite right. It looked too perfect, immediately making it unseeming and ugly. Izuru found someone’s appearance to be much more appealing when their standard blemishes, the ones that everyone had but were mortified to admit to, were apparent. Perhaps it was only something that he would notice, as most people preferred the picture to be “perfect”, but it still bothered him.  

If he could even do a few portraits with a reference, that would be ideal….

“Hinata-kun, wait a moment.”

Hinata stopped in the doorway. 

“Something wrong?”

“Let me draw you.”

Hinata immediately looked skeptical. “You...you want to draw me?”

Izuru rubbed his eyes. “My assignment states that I am to draw one hundred portraits by the end of today and half of them must be drawn from life. I’ve been trying to draw from memory, but those ones aren’t quite coming out the way I’d like them to. I feel that if I had a reference to go off of, I would be able to draw a much better life portrait.”

“And you’re saying you want to use me as a model.”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying.” Looking up for this long, Izuru realized exactly how much his eyes hurt. They felt like they were going to pop out of their sockets. 

“But why me?”

“What do you mean, ‘why you?’ You’re one of the only people I see regularly.”

“Th-that’s not what I mean, it’s…” Hinata trailed off. “Wouldn’t you want to draw someone more interesting? I mean, it’s true you see me every day, but I’m so boring compared to the other people you know. There’s, ah, Matsuda-kun, Kirigiri-sensei…..um…..” Hinata bit his lip as he realized he had painted himself into a corner.

Izuru just gestured toward the chair sitting next to his bed. “Sit.”

He did, face slightly aglow with red. “Is this ok?”

“Mmmm….sit up straight.” 

Hinata went up about two inches in height. He was a fairly tall boy, so he must have developed an unfortunate habit of slouching.  “Like this?”

“And turn your head to the right a little more, there’s a slight glare.” 

Izuru probably spent more time on this one than the other portraits, but that was only because he was paying close attention to the features. The shape of Hinata’s eyes, how his cheekbones were positioned, how the bridge of his nose sloped, all of it, even the occasional acne scars on his forehead. He tried to ignore how Hinata would fidget at all the worst times. He had obviously never been a model before. 

Izuru was so tired of drawing portraits. It was just the same, monotonous movement of a chunk of graphite across a piece of paper, and he didn’t even care about most of the people he had drawn. He hated having to stare at their faces. What was the point of all this, anyway? He had done portraits before, why should he have to do them again? He wanted to draw something else. Like a landscape, or maybe something botanical. Plus if he was allowed to go outside, he would be able to get very solid references….in all honesty, just being able to go outdoors in the open air without cracking his head open would sounded fairly appealing. He was suffocating inside the hospital. And as if that wasn’t torture enough, he could even see that (despite it being long past dry season) it was a rather bright and pleasant looking day out.

_ Wait... _

A rather devious thought occurred to him. Hinata was here. He could use this.

Izuru tore the finished portrait off of the pad and heaved an intentionally dramatic sigh. “This one’s no good.”

Hinata let out a breath that he had apparently been holding and gave in to his lack of posture. “What do you mean? What’s so bad about it?”

“I think….the lighting in this room is all wrong.” He held his pencil at arm’s length toward Hinata, to give as much of an impression that he knew what he was doing as possible. “It’s too dim in here.”

“Is there a way to turn up the lights or something?”

“Not to the best of my knowledge.” Izuru sighed. Of course there was. “We’ll just have to go someplace else with better lighting.”

Hinata looked extremely skeptical. “Like...where?”

“I want to go to the hospital’s courtyard. It’s not far from this room, since we’re on the ground floor.”

The hospital’s courtyard was really more of a garden, well kept by the faculty employees and occasionally members of the school’s horticulture club. It was a very colorful place, a setting that Izuru did not belong in and was not associated with. Still, he wanted to go. Going with someone else might even prove to be rather pleasant. He had only ever seen it from the view of a window.

“The courtyard?” Hinata asked. “But I thought you weren’t allowed to leave your room.”

“I’m not. But you’re going to help me sneak out.”

“What!?”

“Jin doesn’t make the rounds to check on me for another three hours. That should be more than enough time. Plus there are accessible wheelchairs near all the exits. Tell me, how good is your upper body strength?”

“Wait wait wait, hold on!” Hinata said frantically. “First of all, my upper body strength isn’t that great, and second of all, we could get in huge trouble! I-I mean...I don’t know what would happen to you, but I’m sure that Murasame and Kirigiri-sensei would nail my ass to the wall if they found out I helped you sneak out! I’d probably get thrown out of Student Council.”

_ As if that would be much of a loss,  _ Izuru thought. 

“And I mean….aren’t you afraid of getting in trouble? Isn’t Kirigiri-sensei your guardian or something?”

“I don’t care what happens to me,” Izuru said, meaning it. “Jin doesn’t have the nerve to do anything drastic. At least, not yet.” 

Hinata paused for a bit. “Do you really want to go outside that badly?”

Izuru was sometimes a bit surprised at how perceptive Hinata could be, especially for a student who made it into the Academy because his family had money. He had already guessed that this wasn’t about the assignment.

“The last time I was outside, I had to sneak out as well,” Izuru said hesitantly. “I never got past the school gates because my legs ceased functioning and I hit my head on the steps of the school. Blood went everywhere, I ended up here, and I was diagnosed with Guillain Barre Syndrome. That was the first time I had been outdoors in nearly seven months.” 

“Seven months?”

“Seven months. And now I fear my chances of going out again have grown even slimmer now because of my diagnosis.”

 

Hinata leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling, clearly weighing his options. “Fine. But if we get caught, I’m blaming you.”

The unadulterated pity card. All he had to do was play that, and it worked on almost everyone. 

“We won’t.” 

 

\--

 

Hajime had had to get a little creative with Kamukura for this to work. He started by lending Kamukura his sweatshirt so it wouldn’t be as easy to recognize him (he had considered not wearing a binder today since the sweatshirt was so loose, and now he was rather glad that he decided to anyway). He had also stuffed some pillows into Kamukura’s bed so it looked like he was in bed sleeping in case anyone decided to poke their head in to check on him. There was also the issue of how Kamukura couldn’t walk. He would probably have to be carried until some other method of transportation made itself apparent, like a wheelchair or something.

Carrying Kamukura. Huh boy. 

And then there was the obstacle of making sure to remain out of sight. This could end so badly if they were caught by the hospital staff. Though since the courtyard was near Kamukura’s room on the ground floor, it might not be too much of a problem if they timed it right. 

Kamukura looked strange in Hajime’s sweatshirt. Green wasn’t really a color that suited him. Maybe it was because black was the only color Hajime had ever seen Kamukura wear casually. 

“Why are your clothes so itchy?” Kamukura asked.

“I had to give myself a haircut a few weeks ago, and I was wearing that when I did,” Hajime said sheepishly. “Sorry. I’ve tried washing it, but I guess it’s still a bit prickly.” He sat on the bed with his back to Kamukura. “Are you able to get on?”

Kamukura pulled up the hood of the sweatshirt, tucking his hair behind it. “I think so.” 

“Just don’t grab my neck, ok?”

“Ok.”

Kamukura eased himself onto Hajime’s back as best he could, clinging to his shoulders and clutching his drawing supplies. Hajime was able to stand up once he was able to grab onto Kamukura’s legs so that he was supporting him. They achieved standard piggyback in no time at all.

Which was enough to make Hajime very hyper-aware of the temperature of his face. _ I...honestly never could have predicted this.  _

“Is this ok?” He asked.

“Yes.” 

Hajime peeked out the door of Kamukura’s room. “It looks pretty clear...I don’t hear anything either.”

“There’s someone coming down the hallway adjacent to this one, and their only option to continue is to turn right and come down this one.”

“How the hell do you know that?”

“I can hear them.”

“You can?”

“I can if I focus. And right now you’re preventing me from doing that.”

Hajime decided to just not question anything Kamukura told him anymore. “So should I go? Is there anyone in the next corridor?”

“Not from what I can hear. You can make it if you hurry.”

So they hurried. With Kamukura guiding him and giving him directions, sneaking out wasn’t nearly as disastrous as was originally perceived. Though when they did finally make it to the doors that led to the courtyard, Hajime was beyond relieved. And, conveniently, there were indeed several functioning wheelchairs lined up and at the ready. Kamukura was able to settle himself into one of the wheelchairs fairly easily.

“We made it,” Hinata breathed.

“You’re surprised?”

“To be honest, a little.”

 

\--

 

It was chilly out. Izuru was glad that he had kept Hinata’s itchy, ugly sweater. The air felt very crisp, since the sun was still beating down on the two but the cold air still nipped at their skin. In spite of all this, the flowers in the courtyard were still in full bloom. The stone paths were arranged in a circle around a fountain, white and speckled with marble. Izuru had seen many pictures of flowers in his studies, but he had never really seen an actual flower before, aside from the roses that were put in his room sometimes. Izuru had always had a particular preference for roses, and they were fairly easy to coax out of Jin and Matsuda. 

It just felt invigorating to be outside. He had never felt a cold this intense before, but it was a new experience. He wasn’t used to those. He had to sneak out again to get one, but so far he hadn’t smashed his head on solid concrete. It was a start. 

“The courtyard looks nice,” Hinata commented, wheeling Izuru through the garden. “The botany club does a pretty good job with upkeep, don’t they?”

“They do,” Izuru said, brushing his fingers against the curved blossom of a cluster of snapdragons. The surface was unexpectedly smooth. “This place is very colorful.”

“This might be the happiest I’ve ever seen you.”

Izuru paused. “What in the world gave you that notion?”

“O-oh, I’m sorry….um...there just seems like something’s different about you. Good different.”

Izuru wasn’t happy. Mildly impressed, maybe. Amused. He still struggled with the concept of happiness. He didn’t feel it was necessary. 

“Do you want to sit near the fountain?” Hinata asked hastily. 

“Sure.”

 

Izuru didn’t even want to finish the assignment. It would ruin his mood. Which was something he didn’t want to do since he felt somewhat relaxed for once. The sound of the fountain was dull and soothing, and being surrounded by color was oddly comforting as well. He was reluctant to admit it, but he was glad that Hinata was with him. Despite the fact that he was awkwardly sitting on the bench beside him starved for something to say and therefore taking a sudden and intense interest in the stones on the pathway. “You’re not going to do any drawing after all?” He finally asked. Izuru just shrugged, threw his head back, closed his eyes (lord knows they needed rest) and left it at that. 

A few silent seconds crept by. Izuru became painfully aware of how silent it was. He also became painfully aware of how many colors there were. It was too colorful, almost annoying...all of the colors coming from the flowers, the flowers that he knew all the names of, meanings, and origins. At a glance.

It was just….. 

He sighed. “I’m bored, let’s go back inside.” 

Hinata stared at Izuru in shock. “What? But we just got here.”

“Your point is?”

“Well...don’t you want to stay a little longer? We haven’t even been here for a two minutes.”

“No,” Izuru said without a hint of delay. 

“And...why not?”

“I just told you that I’m bored. So let’s go back.”

Hinata was at a loss as to what to say. “But...you...I don’t…” He kept trying to form sentences, but never finished them. “Your room, it...it’s so empty and there’s no one in there with you and nothing to look at….wouldn’t that be a lot more boring than being out here?”

Izuru shrugged again. “It’s the same.”

“Wait...what?”

“They’re both boring,” said Izuru. “No matter how different they seem to be from their own distinguishing qualities, they’re old experiences. There’s no longer a point of being here. It’s too bright out here and it’s hurting my eyes anyway.”

“...Is that how you feel all the time? With everything?”

Izuru nodded.

Hinata stared at Izuru. “That’s...that’s bullshit,” he said. “New experiences have to last longer than five minutes. This place, it...it’s a garden! The air isn’t stale, there are no white walls, it’s not a tiny little space...it has to be better than your hospital room.”

“Nothing here interests me.”

“C-come on! There has to be something that you like about this place!” Hinata sputtered.

Izuru sighed, pointing to a random patch of flora off to the side. “Tell me what those are.”

“Um…” Hinata looked surprised. “They’re flowers?”

“More specifically, they’re crocuses. Their full name is crocus longiflorus, apart of the asparagales order, the iridaceae family, and the crocoidae subfamily. Its first sighting was documented on the Mediterranean Island of Crete.” He pointed to another patch. “Those are antirrhinum, colloquially referred to as snapdragons. Full name is antirrhinum majus, belonging to the lamiales order, the plantaginaceae family, and the antirrhinae subfamily. Those ones over there are zinnias, an annual species also known as zinnia elegans, which is a member of the….” As he continued listing off species and orders and whatever else came to mind, out of his peripheral vision, Izuru could see Hinata looking at him with his lips parted in awe. He didn’t blame Hinata. From what he had observed, any normal person wouldn’t be able to memorize half of the information in one lifetime that Izuru could remember off the top of his head. When he was finished, and had rattled off all of the information he could think of (which was nearly five minutes later) he rested his hand back at his side. “Do you see what I’m getting at?” Hinata didn’t even answer. So Izuru continued. “I already know everything about this garden. It no longer interests me any more than the rest of this hospital. So please take me back to my room. At least I’ll be able to sleep in there.”

“...No.”

Izuru threw up his eyebrows. 

“You know what? No.” Hinata went on. “I let you guilt trip me and went to too much trouble to get you out here. I could get thrown out of the Student Council for doing this and get indefinitely suspended. I brought you out here because I thought that you would enjoy it and I also thought it would be good to get you out of that prison of a room. So we’re staying here longer! And I don’t care how bored you are!” Realizing that he was close to yelling, he slowly recoiled, crossing his arms and legs with eyes straight ahead. Izuru wasn’t angry or annoyed at his impudence. He was more amused than anything, seeing as Hinata had grown comfortable enough being around him to tell Izuru off like that. Hinata swallowed. “Because I’m having fun. Hell! I’m having loads of fun just sitting here in silence and listening to the goddamn birds.”

Izuru didn’t feel like arguing. If he was stuck here, he might as well do what he came here to do. After a few more awkward minutes, he pulled out the nearly full sketchpad and began pencilling a thin outline of Hinata’s profile. Hinata noticed the scratching of the pencil right away.

“What are you doing?”

“Hold still.”

So Hinata did, and Izuru was able to take in every detail of his profile and copy them down onto paper. The contour of his cheekbones, acne scars, all of the details he wouldn’t have remembered. The silence wasn’t so bad, it helped Izuru focus.

“Am I boring to you?” Hinata asked. “I know that’s how you see most people, but am I like that too?”

“Yes,” Izuru said without looking up. “You are.” 

“....Ok.” Hinata still didn’t seem convinced. It was a natural reaction to want to deny it. People always took “boring” as an insult, and again, that was understandable. “What...or rather, why is that? I’m curious.” 

“The same reason the courtyard bores me. You’re too easy to figure out.”

“Prove it.”

Izuru still didn’t look up from his drawing. “Your name is Hajime Hinata, your gender is male, your sex is female, you’re sixteen years and ten months of age and a first year student enrolled in Hope’s Peak Academy’s preparatory course. Overall, you’re a rather insecure person and constantly feel the need to live up to the standards that you have always aspired to, yet you continue to hold yourself back out of fear that you won’t be accepted if you try. It’s clear that you’ve explored many fields of interest finding none of them suitable, thus convincing yourself that you aren’t good enough to interact with people who have found their calling until you can improve yourself. Am I wrong?”

A pause. “You were able to tell?”

“Tell what?”

Hinata had gone as white as a sheet. “Th-that I’m...That I’m not a boy. It was really that obvious?”

Hajime Hinata’s insecurities truly knew no bounds. “It was difficult for me to tell right away. I didn’t say you weren’t male. Sex and gender aren’t the same thing. And you seem very much male. Please correct me if I’m wrong.”

“N-no…” he was actually smiling. There was a small tint of color on his cheeks. “You’re not wrong about anything. I’m not even gonna try to deny it. You’re incredible. We’ve only known each other for about...what, a month? And you already know so much about me.”

Izuru wondered if Hinata would ever see the scars on his own chest, that were there when he first woke up. Even though it didn’t seem relevant as of now.  

“Well, it’s as I said. You’re easy to read.” 

“Not like you. You’re always so stone-faced. You always have the same expression no matter what we talk about. It’s kinda funny, honestly. You’ve got like, the Ultimate Resting Bitchface.” 

“Please don’t patronize me, Hinata-kun. And hold still.” 

Hinata just laughed. “I’m sorry if I bore you, if all of this bores you for that matter, but...I’m really glad we came out here. Even if I am the most boring person in the world, I’m so happy you still tolerate me.”

Izuru looked at Hinata. Then down at his drawing. Hinata’s face was dead serious in the drawing. It didn’t look right. It looked too dour for his face. So he erased it, replacing it with the subtle smile that was plastering his face now. It looked better on him. “Hinata-kun.”

“Yeah?”

“Just because I find you boring doesn’t mean I don’t like you. It’s the same with people like Jin and Yasuke. I’m glad you’re here too,” Izuru said. “I didn’t mean to offend you.”

“Oh, r-really?” said Hinata. “Then I guess I misinterpreted that. I’m glad that you, ah, don’t dislike me. That I’m not boring  _ and _ troublesome. I’m glad I don’t bother you. Or do I?”

Smiles really did look nice on his face. Izuru felt bad, in a way. Should he try smiling too? He had never really thought about it before. His expressions just happened naturally, but according to Hinata those changes were pretty much nonexistent. It was worth a try. He turned up the corners of his mouth, trying to show his teeth like Hinata did. “You don’t bother me.”

“Um...Kamukura-kun? What are you doing with your face?”

“What are you talking about?” He could feel his eye twitch involuntarily. 

Hinata stifled back a laugh. “Y-you’re face, that’s...that’s terrifying, what are you doing?” 

Kamukura quickly retracted and looked away. “Nothing. Never mind. Shut up.”

 

\--

 

They sat in the courtyard and talked long after Kamukura had finished the portrait. At one point he simply said that he needed to go back inside since Jin was going to make his rounds to check on him soon. It was getting a bit late and significantly colder, so Hajime didn’t object to this. He was able to successfully wheel Kamukura back to his room and help him onto his bed. Kamukura always seemed very annoyed when he had to be helped with anything, but Hajime helped him anyway. Though even if he was just trying to be helpful, it still felt like it was just a sick excuse to be able to touch Kamukura again. Just that excited Hajime a bit more than it probably should have. The boy in question had since slowed down quite a bit since the beginning of their little outing together, saying he felt dizzy and subdued. He stumbled getting onto the bed, almost falling to the floor. 

“Hey, woah, shit, sorry--” Hajime catches him. “You ok?”

“My head hurts.”

“Do you need anything? Like, some water or something?”

“I just want to sleep. Please.”

This time Kamukura was able to successfully ease himself into bed. Hajime took it upon himself to clear off all of his art supplies so that Kamukura could stretch himself out. “Are you comfortable?”

“Yes.” His eyes were already shut, sinking into his pillow. 

 

_ He’s been breathing like that for 30 minutes now. He’s got to be asleep. _

_ Am I really about to do this? He  _ **_is_ ** _ asleep, right? He’s not gonna wake up? _

Hajime was right above Izuru’s face, still debating what his next move should be. If he was going to do this, he would have to do it now. He might not get another opportunity to do so. So he carefully swept a few of the stray strands of hair away from Izuru’s pale face. It almost looked like newly forged porcelain, like he was a doll, if not for the dark circles under his eyes. 

Kissing him felt wrong. He didn’t know why he thought it wouldn’t. He was inferior to Kamukura in every way. That was all he ever would be, just an underling. Just someone who was sufficient for relieving boredom. Still, he refused to pull his lips away. This would never happen again, so he might as well enjoy it. Even if there was no warmth on the other end. 

He immediately regretted it afterward. 

_ I’m such a fucking idiot _ , he thought as he quickly removed himself from the room. 

_ \-- _

 

Izuru was a little unsure if he should say anything while Hinata was kissing him. Like the fact that he wasn’t asleep yet.

Then again, he had never been kissed before.

_ A new experience.  _

Might as well just let it happen. He was too tired to think about it too much.  

  



End file.
